SOURCE: Clarke, Deborah. “Gender, War, and Cross-Dressing in The Unvanquished.” In Faulkner and Gender. Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1994, edited by Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie, pp. 228-51. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996.

In the following essay, Clarke examines the way war is dealt with in The Unvanquished by women, children, and African Americans.

I'd rather engage Forrest's whole brigade every morning for six months than spend that same length of time trying to protect United States property from defenseless Southern women and niggers and children. … Defenseless! God help the North if Davis and Lee had ever thought of the idea of forming a brigade of grandmothers and nigger orphans, and invading us with it¹

Are women defenseless damsels or consummate soldiers? The role of women in Faulkner's work is always problematic, but women's relation to war intensifies that situation in a particularly intricate and complex manner. As...