Year of Publication
Master of Arts (MA)
Arts and Sciences
Dr. Peter Kalliney
William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury, Harry Crews in A Feast of Snakes, and Kathryn Stockett in The Help each depict African Americans in roles as domestic servants. The differing historical situations of the novels play a large part in the disparity among the depictions. However, each novel clearly holds black domestic laborers in contrast to their white employers. These texts’ depictions of black domestic servants and the whites for whom they care are at different points strikingly similar and tellingly disparate. The overlaps and fissures between black domestic servants portrayed as mammy’s and uncles and black domestic servants characterized as powerful and morally upright human beings and what those overlaps and fissures demonstrate about the novels and the historical moments of their creations will be the focus of this study.
Gatewood, Anna, "REVERSING THE TROPE OF WHITE PATERNALISM OR MAKING MAMMIES?: BLACK DOMESTIC SERVANTS IN THE WORKS OF FAULKNER, CREWS, AND STOCKETT" (2012). Theses and Dissertations--English. 2.