Karen Horney Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Marjorie B. Haselswerdt

Critical Essay by Marjorie B. Haselswerdt

SOURCE: "'Keep Your Muck': A Horneyan Analysis of Joe Christmas and Light in August," in Third Force Psychology and the Study of Literature, edited by Bernard J. Paris, Associated University Presses, 1986, pp. 206-24.

In the following essay, Haselswerdt presents a detailed discussion of the character Joe Christmas from William Faulkner's novel Light in August (1932), analyzing his "arrogant-vindictive" personality based primarily on Horney's theories as she presented them in Neurosis and Human Growth.

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When Alfred Kazin describes the "pinched rotted look" of Faulkner's Light in August, he is referring to the influence of the depression on the atmosphere of the novel ["The Stillness of Light in August, in Faulkner, edited by Robert Penn Warren, 1966]. But his words have a resonance for the story of Joe Christmas that goes far beyond the superficial. Light in August looks "pinched and rotted," it seems to me, not only because its characters...
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