As I Dyed by William Faulkner is presented to the reader in a stream-of-consciousness narrative style told from fifteen points of view, in which each chapter is narrated by a character. Faulkner involves the reader forming multiple interpretations and they are sometimes conflicting. The novel centers on a character, Addie, who has just died. However, Addie only has one chapter in the novel, but the fact that she is already dead makes her section even more significant. Addie is an individual trapped in a patriarchal world that represses and silences her. Generalizing Addie without exploring her character flies in the face of how Faulkner chose to portray her and the gender roles she is forced to conform to. Through an analysis of patriarchal linguistic constraints, Addie's chapter and role will be determined as an inability to express her desires and identity. One of the main characteristics on which Faulkner's As I Lay Dying revolves is the relationship between "words and things". Addie describes: "The words go straight up in a thin, quick, harmless line. How terrible the doing that runs along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person can ride from one to the other." the other" (Faulkner, 173). This quote from Addie shows her struggle with words and language and her inability to express herself the way she wants. In Castration or Decapitation Hélène Cixous describes this relationship between words and things by stating : “Man/woman automatically means big/small, superior/inferior… Indeed every theory of culture, every theory of society, the whole conglomerate of the symbolic system – everything that is, what is said, everything that ...... middle of paper ......use women don't have penises, they can't be part of the symbolic order.Finally we learn that Addie is unable to express herself in a way that conforms to the symbolic order cite Cixous, Hélène. "The Laughter of the Medusa." 1975. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York. Hélène. (1981) "Castration or decapitation", in Signs n. 7, pp. 41-55Faulkner, William. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print.Forte, Jeanie. “Female Performance Art: Feminism and Postmodernism.” Theater newspaper. May 1988. Kristeva, J. (1986) "A Question of Subobjectivity. Interview with S. Sellers," in Women's Review, Vol.12, pp. 19-22. Ross, The Inexhaustible Voice of Stephen M. Fiction: Speech and Writing in Faulkner. Athens: University of Georgia P, 1989.