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Chapter 2
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Absalom, Absalom!, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling, Perspective, and Truth
The South
The Limits of Ambition
Social Taboos, Racism, and Inherited Trauma
Summary
Analysis
Mr. Compson continues his telling of Sutpen’s story. He explains that Rosa went to live with Judith at Sutpen’s Hundred after Mr. Coldfield died in 1864. It had been Ellen’s dying wish (she died in 1863) that Rosa, who was then 20, “save” Judith (who is, in fact, years older than Rosa) “from the family’s doom.” Ellen had felt Sutpen was determined to carry out this “doom.” Rosa was born well after Ellen married and had children, and Rosa and Ellen’s parents weren’t expecting Rosa and didn’t really want her. Rosa’s mother died in childbirth, and Rosa was made to feel guilty about it her whole life. The spinster aunt, who continued to take “revenge” on the town for the debacle of Ellen’s wedding, raised Rosa. Until she moved to Sutpen’s Hundred, Rosa lived alone in the house with her father and hated him. Meanwhile, Ellen gradually turned into a shadow of her former self.
Rosa directs the majority of her ire toward Sutpen, but this passage reveals (insofar as the reader can trust the veracity of Mr. Compson’s version of events) that there were many other aspects of her life that may have contributed to the bitterness and scorn she feels as an adult. Yet the fact that Ellen was already married to Sutpen and had children with him by the time Rosa was born lends symbolic weight to her sense that Sutpen has doomed her and her family—her entire existence has been clouded by the influence he has exerted over her family.
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Themes
Rosa, Mr. Compson suggests, may have seen Mr. Coldfield’s death as “fate itself supplying her with the opportunity to observe her sister’s dying request.” Mr. Compson explains that Sutpen returned in 1866 to find Rosa living there with Judith and Clytie (short for Clytemnestra, the daughter Sutpen had with one of the enslaved women he brought with him on his initial journey to Jefferson). Rosa had only seen Sutpen a number of times in her young life, but when she saw him that day in 1866, she recognized his “ogre-face.”
Mr. Compson speculates on what may have motivated Rosa to move to Sutpen’s Hundred, reinforcing the superstitiousness that is so characteristic of her. Mr. Compson’s version of events also calls into question the veracity of Rosa’s account—Rosa speaks with authority about Sutpen, yet this passage suggests that she really saw very little of him, at least as a child.
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Themes
Literary Devices
Mr. Compson shifts his focus to Rosa’s childhood visits to Sutpen’s Hundred with her spinster aunt. During these visits, Rosa is ordered to play with her niece and nephew (who are older than her). On the four or five times per year that Ellen would visit Mr. Coldfield’s house with Judith and Henry, the spinster aunt would create an atmosphere of “conspiracy,” in which Mr. Coldfield was on one side and Sutpen was on the other. Sutpen doesn’t realize he is the “foe,” though, for he never accompanies his family on these visits. Nobody really knows why he doesn’t attend these visits. It’s possible that Miss Rosa’s explanation (which she got from the spinster aunt) is correct: that Sutpen no longer feels obligated to humor Mr. Coldfield now that he’s gotten everything he needed out of him.
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Themes
Literary Devices
By the time Rosa is 10, the spinster aunt has run away, and so Rosa visits Sutpen’s Hundred once per year with her father—Mr. Coldfield insists on it, though Rosa doesn’t know why. In truth, Mr. Coldfield is growing increasingly concerned that Sutpen will disclose to his children the details of the shady business he and Mr. Coldfield got into together. Mr. Coldfield wears his suit on these visits, which he otherwise wears once a week.
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One year, the visits simply stop, though it’s never clear to Rosa why. Mr. Coldfield never explains his decision. It could be that there’s no point now that Judith and Henry are grown up and Henry is away at college in Oxford, Mississippi.
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Rosa won’t see Sutpen again for many years, but she sees a lot more of Judith and Ellen. Ellen is in her late thirties now and thriving, having finally accepted what’s become of her life. She and Judith frequently head into town, and they sometimes visit the Coldfield house. Rosa can’t figure out which of them is “the most unreal”: Ellen, “the adult who had escaped reality into a bland region peopled by dolls,” or Judith, who also seems detached from reality, though in a different way than Ellen.
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The summer that Judith is 17, she and Ellen head to Memphis to buy Judith clothing for her trousseau. This is the year after Henry goes off to college and after he brought his friend Charles Bon, who is from New Orleans, home with him for the holidays. Sutpen is away in New Orleans on business, but only General Compson and Clytie ever figure out what he’s doing there.
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Rosa didn’t see Henry the winter he and Charles Bon were home from school, though she heard of all the parties that took place at Sutpen’s Hundred that season. Sutpen is the county’s most successful landowner and cotton-planter at this point, and the town constantly suspects him of shady business dealings. They don’t like him, but Sutpen doesn’t care about that, since the town has “accepted” him.
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Though Ellen still ventures into town to shop, she stops coming to the Coldfield house, apparently feeling it would be an act of “vanity” to drop by and give unwarranted advice about Miss Rosa’s clothes or the house’s décor. It’s 1860 now, and war is inevitable. Meanwhile, the Sutpen family starts to feel the dark end their shared “destiny” is leading them toward, though none of them are particularly worried about it just yet.
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Rosa hasn’t seen Charles Bon at this point. Bon is a few years older than Henry and a bit too old to be in college. He also feels out of place in Oxford, having come from the cosmopolitan city of New Orleans. He’s cultured, handsome, and apparently wealthy, though he has no parents. He has a natural ease to him, which contrasts with Sutpen’s boisterous, grand character. But Rosa doesn’t see any of this; all she knows of Bon comes from what Ellen says about him. Ellen seems to consider it a given that a romance will develop between Judith and Bon.
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Hearing Ellen talk about Bon, Rosa—“the spinster doomed for life at sixteen”—isn’t jealous of Judith. Nor does she feel sorry for herself. (When Ellen told Quentin’s grandmother about Bon, Mr. Compson explains to Quentin, Quentin’s grandmother felt it sounded like a bad “fairy tale,” though Rosa must have taken the romance very seriously.) Rosa once remarks to Ellen that the Coldfields “deserve” Bon, which causes Ellen to “shriek” with amusement, adding that, indeed, the Coldfields deserve to receive an “honor marriage” in return.
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Ellen has been telling the town all about Judith’s engagement to Charles Bon. Then, one day, something happens: Bon and Henry leave without saying a word, and Ellen shuts herself in the dark room and doesn’t emerge until her death two years later. Through Sutpen’s enslaved people, the town learns that Henry and Sutpen got into an argument on Christmas Eve, leading Henry to “abjure[] his father and renounce[] his birthright” and leave that night.
Everyone in town attributes Henry’s abrupt departure to his youth or his being a Sutpen. Meanwhile, Judith and Sutpen continue to ride into town together and act normal, which means the argument can’t have been between Bon and Sutpen. The townspeople also assume the argument can’t have been between Henry and Sutpen, either, since it’s common knowledge “that between Henry and Judith there had been a relationship closer than the traditional loyalty of brother and sister even.”
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Despite Henry’s abrupt departure, Rosa carries on as though nothing is wrong, continuing to sew Judith’s wedding dress. Then the Civil War begins, and Colonel Sartoris and Sutpen’s regiment heads to war in 1861. Sutpen is nearly 55 at this point, and he’s filled out considerably since he first arrived in Jefferson in 1833. But he wouldn’t get fat until later—not until something happens with his and Rosa’s engagement and Rosa returns to Mr. Coldfield’s house, never to speak to Sutpen again.
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Miss Rosa doesn’t see the regiment leave Jefferson because Mr. Coldfield forbids her from doing so. But it isn’t because Sutpen is part of it—Rosa’s father objected to the war long before it was actually declared. But once the war actually began, he seemed to change overnight, just like Ellen had after marrying Sutpen. After troops began to make their way into town, he closed his shop and refused to do business with them. He also refused to let the spinster aunt come back home while her husband was serving in the army. From that point forward, he and Miss Rosa lived in the back of the house, with the windows closed and shuttered.
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One morning, Mr. Coldfield learns that people—presumably soldiers—have broken into and looted his store. That night, he heads upstairs to the attic and nails the door shut behind him, and he remains there until his death. Miss Rosa, who before now hasn’t had to learn any practical skills (her aunt had raised her to believe she is special), takes to heading out at night and getting enough food to sustain her and her father for a couple days at a time. For three years, she hoists his meals up to him through a window, though the quality and quantity of the food gradually declines. Eventually Mr. Coldfield dies, leaving Miss Rosa orphaned and destitute, since nobody has kept up the store since it was looted. Meanwhile, Ellen has been dead for two years, and Henry has since vanished.
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Though going to live with Judith at Sutpen’s Hundred would be the most practical choice for Rosa, she doesn’t do this at first. Though Ellen had asked Rosa to protect Judith, Mr. Compson speculates that Rosa must have felt that Judith didn’t need any protection. According to Mr. Compson, the real reason Rosa didn’t go to Sutpen’s Hundred right away is that she knew that “Judith knew,” and “may have known for some time,” where Henry and Bon had gone and hadn’t told Rosa. And perhaps Judith didn’t tell Ellen before Ellen’s death, either. At any rate, Mr. Compson explains, concluding this chapter of his story, Miss Rosa didn’t know that Henry was alive until Wash Jones rode to Sutpen’s Hundred one afternoon and called out her name repeatedly.
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