Faulkner’s Queer Violences: Quentin Compson and Gail Hightower’s Wife

Abstract: Literary representations of suicide among queer characters often symbolize critiques of complex hegemonic constraints. However, critical readings of these suicides easily slip into viewing queerness as the cause of self-violence, thus making difficult the task of imagining queer futures within these literary worlds. And symbolic interpretations of literary suicide, specifically, run the risk of conflating literary representation and lived experience. Criticism focused on the suicide of Quentin Compson has produced a plethora of symbolic readings that tie queerness to violence. On the other hand, the death of Gail Hightower’s wife in Light in August has received much less critical attention, even though her narrative is, I contend, an iteration of Quentin’s narrative. Reading these two deaths together can illuminate the potential meanings of self-violence in Faulkner’s works better than reading Quentin’s suicide in isolation can, and leaves little room for the easy equation of queerness and violence.