In these stimulating papers from the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference in 1985, feminism and Faulkner studies collide, with beneficial results for each. The disruptive and disturbing characterization of women in Faulkner's fictional world and the influence of actual women in the novelist's life are given attentive study in these papers. The contributors to this collection consider questions debated for many decades in Faulkner studies and those recently raised to prominence under the illuminating ray of feminist criticism. "There is throughout Faulkner something disturbing," Noel Polk observes, "about the comprehensiveness with which women in his work are associated with blood and excrement and filth and death."