혼혈혼과 백인우월주의의 문제:팔월의 빛과 압살롬,압살롬! 연구 = A study on the miscegenation and the white supremacy

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

(Abstract)
In white dominated communities in southern America, white people fear about the sexual relationships between the white and the black, and so they made a rule known as the "one drop rule." According to this rule, if a white family blood was mixed with that of a black family even by just one drop, its descendents would become Negroes. This rule became the standard of proving the mulatto's identity and his/her social position in southern societies. One of the main reasons why white societies treat the mulattoes as Negroes is that white people are eager to protect their blood's purity from being mixed with black people's blood. They think that their blood might be tainted from miscegenation with black slaves.
As mulattoes' skin become whiter and whiter, after many times of blood mixture, it's hard to tell them from the white only by their appearance. So the white people are extremely frightened of this "invisible blackness". They are obsessively afraid of Negro blood's flowing into a white family. As a result, they want to keep the mulatto's position to be the same as the Negro's.
Miscegenation between whites and blacks and mulattoes' lives are well described in William Faulkner's Light in August and Absalom, Absalom!.
A tragical protagonist, Joe Christmas of Light in August has parchment colored skin, so people couldn't tell if he is white or black. Although his identity as a Negro is given by his grandfather who is fiercely against colored people and women. But Joe's grandfather just assumes that Joe may be a Negro without any evidence of his nigger blood. The people who looked at Joe undoubtedly think that he is white.
But after he murders Joanna, he is given a label by the town as a Negro who raped a white woman. The white society doesn't want to know his true identity, they just reject him from their society because he raped and killed a white woman. They think of him as a threat to their definitely divided social system of whites and Negroes. The white society's response to a white woman's death is so extreme that they want Joe to be lynched immediately.
Meanwhile what Joe wants is just peace regardless of his racial identity. But he is shot and castrated by the southern society which is full of prejudice about race and the white supremacy. Joe is a victim of discrimination by the white society
In Absalom, Absalom!, there are different views among the white society regarding mulatto men and women. Clytie Sutpen, who is Thomas Sutpen's mulatto daughter, keeps her position as a slave in a white family. For that reason, she is accepted as a member of the family. As she also endures her destiny as a Negro, she is considered far from threatening the biased rule of the white society.
Like Joe in Light in August, Charles Bon, who is Sutpen's mulatto son, is a "White Negro" too. Everyone around him has no doubt about his identity as a white man. However, after meeting his white stepbrother, Henry Sutpen, at the Mississippi University, Bon come to think that Henry's father could be his father too because Henry resembles Bon's face very much. After visiting Sutpen's house, Bon becomes sure about that Sutpen is his father. Recognizing that, he keeps trying to be a son of Sutpen, but Bon is rejected by the family as a result of the fear of tainting of white blood.
Sutpen doesn't want to accept Bon as his first son because Bon is a part Negro. Sutpen wants Henry to protect their family from Bon and reveals the secret to Henry. Bon as a hero for Henry and a future husband for Judith Sutpen now turns into a stereotyped Negro in the southern society. When he tries to get into the white family, crossing the boundary of race, the white society protects its white family and responds to that with violence. Bon is killed by his white brother who insists on his domination over Negroes. Unlike Clytie's case, if mulattoes insist on having the right to be regarded as children of white families, their existences become totally denied.
Till now we have seen that Joe and Bon are victims of the discrimination and supremacy of the powerful white society. It does not matter whether they are human or not because they are just considered the dangerous elements that can shake the whole order of the white society. So eventually they have to be removed from the society to preserve white people's rights and the unfair laws that privilege the white people.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 목 차
• Ⅰ. 서론....................................................................1
• Ⅱ. 『팔월의 빛』: 혼혈혼과 백인 사회의 반응
• 1. 조의 애매한 정체성.............................................6
• 2. 혼혈혼에 대한 백인 사회의 반응...........................19
• Ⅲ. 『압살롬, 압살롬!』: 혼혈혼과 그 자식의 문제
• 1. 딸 클라이티의 경우...........................................40
• 2. 아들 찰스 본의 경우..........................................50
• Ⅳ. 결론..................................................................72
• 참고문헌................................................................76
• 영문초록.................................................................80