Summary Of Faulkner's Fiction And Southern Society

The main purpose of Jehlen’s article “Faulkner’s Fiction and Southern Society” is to discuss how Faulkner viewed the South and how it affected his writing, particularly in the stories set in Yoknapatawpha. It states that these stories are “tense with extreme, unresolvable contradictions,” and contends that these are “neither temperamental nor linguistic in origin but expressed [Faulkner’s] profoundly discordant view of Southern life.” It opens with a quote from Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust that suggests the exact kind of contradiction that the article is out to prove.
The article then moves on to provide more detail on what exactly causes this contradiction. It discusses the history of the South, and how it has been driven by a struggle