Themes
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.
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.
Themes
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.
Rosa speaks with great authority on her family and Sutpen, yet in truth she rarely saw her sister, her sister’s husband, or her sister’s children. Knowing this, it’s difficult to say whose account—Mr. Compson’s or Rosa’s—comes closer to the truth. Both are similarly biased by their personal relationship with and distance from the family. Meanwhile, Mr. Compson suggests that Rosa’s poor opinion of Sutpen came not from her rare firsthand encounters with him, but rather from the things she heard about him through others—in this case, through the spinster aunt. Thus, the narration reinforces the flimsiness of history’s objectivity.
Themes
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.
Miss Rosa’s account portrays Sutpen as the only character who prioritizes his pride and ambition over his personal obligations to his family, yet here Mr. Compson suggests that Rosa’s own father had similarly ulterior motives for visiting Sutpen’s Hundred—he wanted to guard his reputation.
Themes
Get the entire Absalom, Absalom! LitChart as a printable PDF.
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.
In this passage, Mr. Compson reinforces the reliability issues with Rosa’s account of Sutpen’s life, underscoring how young she was when so many events she purports to describe with authority took place—and therefore how unable to understand them she was.
Themes
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.
Rosa’s story portrayed Sutpen in a negative, even supernatural light, suggesting that he cursed Ellen, yet here Mr. Compson suggests that perhaps Ellen wasn’t as miserable as Rosa thought she was—perhaps she married him seeking to “escape[] reality” and has therefore gotten what she wanted.
Themes
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.
This is the novel’s first explicit mention of Charles Bon, a character who will be at the heart of the story’s central conflict, so it’s important to make note of him here. The mysterious nature of Sutpen’s business in New Orleans and Mr. Compson’s emphasis on it here suggest that the business may become relevant later in the story as more details emerge. A trousseau refers to the objects—clothes, linens, and other domestic goods—that a bride assembles for her marriage.
Themes
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.
Here Mr. Compson confirms that Sutpen succeeded at his goal to achieve “respectability” in the South: he’s become the county’s most successful landowner. People don’t like him, but that was never essential to his plans: one can be respected without being liked.
Themes
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.
Ellen increasingly isolates herself from Rosa and Mr. Coldfield, perhaps finding that the new wealth she has as a result of Sutpen’s success puts her in a different class from her family and that they are now below her. This calls into question the reliability of Miss Rosa’s version of events—could her scorn for Sutpen really be an effort to steer attention away from the simpler and less noble truth that she was simply envious of the wealth and pretension Ellen gained through marrying Sutpen? This passage also reinforces the notion of the Sutpen family’s dark “destiny,” implying that Sutpen’s unceasing quest to achieve wealth and respectability is slowly and inevitably driving himself and his family to ruin.
Themes
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.
Rosa’s romanticized ideas about Bon comes from Ellen’s sense of him—not any of Rosa’s firsthand encounters with Bon. Readers should thus not take her opinion of him as fact. This passage also establishes a contrast between Bon’s easygoing personality and Sutpen’s grand character—Sutpen’s character is a persona he's adopted to fulfill his so-called “design.” It’s not natural to him. Bon’s character, on the other hand, seems more natural and less learned. From this, readers may gather that Bon comes from money whereas Sutpen had to work for his wealth and respectability—the former being a quality Mr. Compson implicitly condemns, and the latter a quality he respects. It’s curious that Bon is wealthy despite having no parents, though, and this is something readers should remember as the story continues to unfold.
Themes
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.
The curse/fate motif continues in this section with the rather contradictory notion that Rosa has long felt “doomed for life,” which the narration casts in a puzzlingly negative light—normally, one associates doom with death rather than life. The negative portrayal of Rosa’s doom seems to gesture toward the idea that Rosa has lived beyond her time—that the culture and world she inhabited as a youth no longer has a place in today’s post-Civil War world. In addition, the notion that the way Ellen talked about a possible romance between Bon and Judith seemed like a bad “fairy tale” casts doubt on the authenticity of their romance. Were there really feelings between Bon and Judith, or was the match merely something Ellen concocted in her head? It’s impossible to tell what’s true and what’s not with so many conflicting, incomplete versions of events.
Themes
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.
This argument between Henry and Sutpen will be at the center of practically all the story’s conflicts. Faulkner intentionally leaves the subject of the argument a mystery to build intrigue and to emphasize how incomplete and unreliable all the various accounts of Sutpen’s life are. Given the seemingly strategic introduction of Bon earlier in this chapter, it seems plausible to guess that the argument has something to do with Bon, but it's impossible to know this for sure at this early point in the narrative.
Themes
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.”
This passage reinforces that the townspeople of Jefferson aren’t any more informed about the story than readers are—the most anybody can do is speculate on what may have happened to make Henry furious enough to leave town and reject his birthright. This passage also alludes to possible incest (or incestuous feelings) between Henry and Judith. This is a recurring trope throughout some of Faulkner’s works; with the increased chance for genetic mutation that incest brings, it’s possible to interpret this trope as an extension of the curse/doom imagery that appears throughout the story. The possibility of incest between Judith and Henry supports the notion that the Sutpen family is doomed by design.
Themes
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.
The narrative continues to tease the argument or confrontation or big event that happened between Rosa and Sutpen to solidify Rosa’s longstanding resentment of Sutpen. It seems plausible that Sutpen insulted Rosa in some way, but this can only be speculation at this point. The start of the Civil War marks a critical turning point in the story, if one is to interpret the Sutpen saga as an allegory for the South. In that reading, the Civil War would mark the beginning of the end of the plantation culture of the pre-war South—the culture into which Sutpen has made it his life’s goal to be accepted and respected.
Themes
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.
The narrative establishes a parallel between Mr. Coldfield’s gradual decline at the start of the Civil War and the transformation that Ellen underwent following her marriage to Sutpen. This further establishes the story as an allegory for the decline of the South. Though Miss Rosa, in the present day, blames Sutpen for the misery that has plagued her family for decades, it’s just as logical to link that misery with the onset and aftermath of the Civil War, which decimated the South in a physical sense and also made impossible the plantation culture that had formerly been the basis of its society.
Themes
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.
Once more, the narrative emphasizes the Civil War as a critical turning point in characters’ lives—this passage describes how the war initiated Mr. Coldfield’s isolation. Given that he stops running his store and eating at this point, it’s also fair to say that the Civil War is the point at which Mr. Coldfield decides to give up on living altogether. The way the start of the war coincides with the start of Rosa’s father’s gradual decline further establishes the story as an allegory for the fall of the South.
Themes
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.
Mr. Compson speaks in extremely cryptic terms here: he implies that “Judith knew” something about the argument that caused Henry to leave home and reject his birthright, yet he doesn’t give any real hints about what it was that Judith knew. The lack of details Mr. Compson supplies here either hints at the unspeakably horrible nature of whatever Judith knew, or Mr. Compson’s own ignorance on the subject—or possibly both. This section also fills in another gap in the narrative, confirming that Henry returned to Sutpen’s Hundred following his initial departure. The chapter ends with something of a cliffhanger, with Wash Jones seeming determined to alert Judith to something important, though what that something is remains unclear. Given the vague description readers have already received about Henry shooting Judith’s fiancé outside Sutpen’s Hundred, it’s reasonable to guess that Wash Jones is calling to Rosa to alert her to Henry’s murder of Bon.
Themes
