William Faulkner and The Southern Gentleman

The purpose of this study has been to demonstrate that a broad concept of the Southern Gentleman is implicit in Faulkner’s pre-Snopesian male characters. The fundamental assumption carried through the study has been that the only common denominator which can successfully be used to relate the highly legendary and relatively intangible concept of the Southern Gentleman to the historical tradition of gentility is the idea of excellence. The superior men of the short-lived Old South were the gentlemen of the Old South, regardless of whether their superiority lay in an embodiment of the puritanical and pioneer values the South appreciated or in the more universal moral values which have evolved in Western civilization.