THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN ABSALOM, ABSALOM ! 1 - Ghostly and Fantastic figures: identities in crisis ⇒ What is particularly striking in AA is that he stereotype of the Southern Belle* is subverted and that women are given other characteristics than those usually attributed to the Southern Belle : culture, conversation skills, charm, beauty, good manners, naivety, chastity, humility, but also seducing skills. At some point, Ellen Sutpen could match the Southern Belle description, but she is definitely not shown, nor depicted as such. 68, 3 “So the natural thing would have been for her to go out and live with Judith, the natural thing for her or any southern woman, gentlewoman” (…) 68 “but she didn’t”. The quote points out that not only Miss rosa didn’t enter the Southern Belle scheme, but that her natural instincts, her identity as a woman have been perverted. ⇒ As a matter of fact, even if women might not appear as main characters, the most important ones (Ellen, Judith, Clytie, Rosa) reflect complexity in treatment, as we experience different types of women that shed light on different aspects of the novel and have different roles. They are in fact hints, all in their own manner they are hints to the decay of the South. ⇒ In AA, two worlds are depicted, two worlds that co-exist, or rather one world that dominates and crushes the other. On the one side, that of men (which is reality, with specific codes of honour, specific values…), and on the other side, that of women (which is beyond reality, which appears as a shelter from the harsh reality of men’s world). The discrepancy, in values, in codes, and in morals between those two worlds makes them irreconcilable. When Ellen runs towards Thomas who’s committed into a violent fight with his slaves, and sees her children around, she gets angry and Thomas puts an end to the argument by saying “I don’t expect you to understand it, because you are a woman”, 21, I ⇒ Hence, their reclusion in worlds of fantasy, because