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Chapter 3
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
It’s still not dark enough for Quentin to go to Miss Rosa’s—not as dark as she’d prefer it, anyway. Quentin imagines her waiting for him in her dark, stuffy house, dressed all in black, a sequined black bonnet on her head. She’ll have her parasol with her when she emerges from the house to greet him, he predicts. Mr. Compson appears just then, interrupting Quentin’s daydreaming to bring him a letter. He suggests that Quentin go inside to read it, but Quentin counters that it’s still light enough for him to read it outside.
The narration goes into great detail in its description of Quentin’s image of Miss Rosa. The sequined black bonnet and parasol evoke mourning clothing, and they also seem akin to clothing women would have worn in the pre-war era—the scene evokes images of women exiting church dressed in full skirts that Mr. Compson spoke of earlier in the novel. Reading the entire novel as an allegory for the South, then, Miss Rosa’s attire reflects her mourning of the pre-war culture that no longer exists—a culture she has been cursed to outlive and has tried in vain to keep alive. The letter Mr. Compson offers to Quentin is an important development in the narrative—it’s the first piece of solid, physical evidence that Quentin has received that is closer to the truth of the Sutpen story. Up to this point, he’s had to rely on hearsay alone.
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Mr. Compson, still holding the letter, sits with Quentin on the veranda. Continuing his story about the Sutpen saga, he muses that Henry gave up his birthright and financial security out of love for Bon. Bon was “at least an intending bigamist even if not an out and out blackguard,” and Judith would find a picture of Bon’s wife and child on his dead body. And out of that love, Henry chose to believe that what his father said about Bon wasn’t true. Even if in his heart he knew his father couldn’t have made up what he said about “the woman and the child,” he chose to continue deluding himself about Bon as the two of them rode off together Christmas morning. Could he really have expected to find anything other than a confirmation of his father’s accusation in New Orleans? Henry must have known, Mr. Compson insists, “that he was doomed and destined to kill.”
This passage somewhat calls into question the truthfulness of Mr. Compson’s version of the Sutpen story. He’s making fairly bold claims about what Henry learned about Bon and how—indeed, even if—that knowledge motivated his decision to murder Bon. Readers should remember that neither Mr. Compson nor his father witnessed these events and are merely speculating about what they think may have happened between Bon, Henry, and Sutpen. This passage also brings back the language of curses and fate, with Mr. Compson’s speculation that Henry must have known “that he was doomed and destined to kill.” This language indicates that something in Sutpen’s behavior has “doomed” future generations of Sutpens to misery, violence, and suffering. Read as an allegory for the South, then, Henry’s fear reflects the disarray and trauma that the South’s future generations inherit from its history of slavery and its failure to acknowledge or atone for its practice of slavery.
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It was Henry, Mr. Compson explains, who held all the cards. Judith didn’t know what happened in the study on Christmas Eve and wouldn’t know until they brought in Bon’s body and she saw the photograph of the woman and child. All she had to go on was the letter that Henry left for her to find after he and Bon had left, in which he forbade the marriage. Nor did Henry tell Bon what Sutpen had told Henry about Bon. And anyway, Henry wouldn’t need to tell Bon that Sutpen had been to New Orleans and knew of Bon’s secret—Sutpen’s knowledge would have been clear to Bon by Sutpen’s reaction to the announcement of his intention to marry Judith.
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Bon, like Sutpen, arrived seemingly without a past, and he mystifies Mr. Compson. Though he easily charmed Judith and Henry, he immediately became “completely enigmatic” and “withdrawn” the moment he realized Sutpen would try to prohibit Bon’s marriage to Judith.
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Bon loved Judith—though, Mr. Compson adds, Sutpen would learn that Bon had professed his love to others before Judith. Mr. Compson explains that Judith kept the letter he is now holding and gave it to Quentin’s grandmother after Bon’s death. She did this after destroying the other letters he sent her (though he admits that it’s unclear whether Judith was the one who destroyed these other letters). Judith would’ve destroyed the letters after she discovered “in Bon’s coat the picture of the octoroon mistress and the little boy.” Judith must have loved Bon as much as Henry did—in fact, it’s unclear to Mr. Compson which sibling loved Bon more. Mr. Compson suggests that Bon “seduced [Henry] as surely as he seduced Judith,” impressing Henry and all the other “planters’ sons” whom Bon allowed in his inner circle.
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Henry, Mr. Compson declares, was “the provincial, the clown almost,” who got carried away and acted irrationally. Mr. Compson ponders whether Henry’s protective attitude toward Judith’s virginity may in fact have been “the pure and perfect incest,” in which Henry “destroy[ed]” Judith’s virginity by killing the brother-in-law.
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Mr. Compson suggests that Henry witnessed the entirety of Judith and Bon’s courtship, for there was no time or opportunity for them to have been alone together during Bon’s few visits to Sutpen’s Hundred. In total, Bon and Judith saw each other just 12 days. Despite this, Henry found it necessary to kill Bon to prevent the marriage. Mr. Compson expresses skepticism that Judith could’ve been so intent on marrying Bon despite not knowing him that well. But of course, he laments, “they don’t explain it and we are not supposed to know.” In the equation of Judith, Bon, Henry, and Sutpen, there’s something that doesn’t add up.
Mr. Compson continues his story. After Henry and Bon leave that Christmas morning, Judith doesn’t see Bon for four years. And during that time, Bon doesn’t send Judith a single letter—Henry forbids it. Yet when he finally does send her a letter saying it’s time for them to marry, Judith and Clytie get straight to work making a wedding dress. It’s at this point that Sutpen sees the real threat the marriage poses to “his old hardships and ambition,” a threat legitimate enough for him to travel all the way to New Orleans to prove. It’s unclear how long Sutpen had been waiting to go to New Orleans to confirm what he expected to find there.
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Literary Devices
In June, after school wraps up, Bon and Henry arrive at Sutpen’s Hundred, planning to spend a couple days there before continuing on to Bon’s home in New Orleans—where Sutpen has already gone, though nobody knows that’s where he went. (Mr. Compson speculates that Bon must have realized that this is his chance to woo Judith.) Of course, by this point Sutpen must have already found out about “the octoroon mistress and the child,” but nobody could’ve known about that. In Mr. Compson’s telling of the story, Ellen goes out of her way to bring Judith and Bon together to encourage the romance. The fact that their engagement survives Bon’s absence suggests that their romance is real, Mr. Compson allows.
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Mr. Compson speculates that if Henry had only gone with Bon to New Orleans instead of waiting until the next summer to join him, perhaps Bon wouldn’t have had to die—maybe he’d have reacted as Sutpen had to the revelation of Bon’s other family. But Henry does return, and Sutpen does too, and then the events of the following Christmas happen the way they happen.
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In Mr. Compson’s telling, after that Christmas, Judith starts sending letters to Bon, and Henry reads them “without jealousy,” and in the process he becomes “the body which was to become his sister’s lover.” Sutpen, meanwhile, keeps what he learned in New Orleans to himself—perhaps hoping that when Bon finds out that Sutpen has learned his secret, he’ll break things off with Judith. But Bon returns the next year, and Henry and Bon both write Judith letters once school starts back up.
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The Christmas of 1860, Bon and Henry return to Sutpen’s Hundred. By this point, Ellen has already told everyone in town about Judith and Bon’s engagement. Then the outburst on Christmas Eve happens, and Henry and Bon leave for New Orleans the next day. Henry repudiates his family and leaves Sutpen’s Hundred, though he doesn’t have to—he leaves out of love for Bon. Mr. Compson guesses that Bon would’ve asked Henry what Sutpen said to cause the fight (though, Mr. Compson speculates, Bon already knows what Sutpen discovered in New Orleans). Mr. Compson thinks Henry accompanied Bon to New Orleans to prove that whatever Sutpen had told Henry about Bon was true.
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Mr. Compson imagines how Bon would have come clean to Henry—all the “calculation” that went into it. It wouldn’t be the fact of Bon’s mistress and child being Black that bothered Henry—it would have been “the ceremony” that bothered Henry, “the countryman.” And Bon, in all his shrewdness, would be well aware of this. At that point, Henry would have to choose: he could honor “his entire upbringing and thinking,” which had taught him that women were either “ladies or whores or slaves,” or he could be loyal to Bon, his good friend and mentor.
Mr. Compson imagines Bon leading Henry to a brothel in New Orleans, scandalizing Henry, and Bon trying gently to defend his marrying a woman Henry deems a “whore.” In Mr. Compson’s telling, Bon reminds Henry that the woman and child are Black (Bon uses a racial slur to describe them). meaning Bon’s relationship with the woman can’t possibly be considered a binding marriage. Henry, of Sutpen’s Hundred, should know this. Mr. Compson then imagines Henry still failing to accept Bon’s attempt to commit bigamy.
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What happened four years later, Mr. Compson argues, should have happened the day Bon brought Henry to the brothel. But it doesn’t happen that way. Instead, Henry waits four years for Bon to renounce the woman and child and dissolve the marriage—all the while knowing that the relationship isn’t a marriage and that Bon won’t reject the woman and child.
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Mr. Compson’s story continues. That spring, Bon and Henry return north to Mississippi. Bull Run has already been fought, and they join a company that some of their peers have organized at college. Henry (in Mr. Compson’s telling) writes to Judith to update her about his and Bon’s situation. Meanwhile, Henry doesn’t let Bon out of his sight, fearing that Bon will marry Judith, which will force Henry to acknowledge that he is in fact happy to be betrayed by Bon. For to Bon and Henry both, Judith “[is] just the blank shape” onto which both project “what each conceive[s] the other to believe him to be—the man and the youth, seducer and seduced, […] victimised in turn each by the other.”
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In the present, Judith remains a mystery to Mr. Compson: it’s not as though Bon tried to “corrupt her to unchastity,” Mr. Compson argues. And she couldn’t have known the truth about why Sutpen prohibited the marriage. Had she known about the other woman, she might have solved the problem by murdering her.
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Mr. Compson continues his story. Henry and Bon go off to war, and Bon is made lieutenant (though Mr. Compson doubts he even wanted the title). Sutpen, meanwhile, has left with his and Sartoris’s regiment, and Sutpen’s enslaved people have left with the Yankee troops who passed through. Ellen stays in bed all day, shut in and waiting to die while Judith and Clytie keep house. Wash Jones and his daughter live in the abandoned fishing camp in the river bottom.
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Ellen dies and is buried under a massive marble monument Sutpen brought from Charleston, South Carolina. Then Judith’s grandfather Mr. Coldfield dies, having starved to death in his attic, and Judith likely invites Miss Rosa to come live with her (Mr. Compson guesses). Miss Rosa declines the offer, apparently waiting for Judith to receive a letter from Bon (the very letter Mr. Compson now holds). Judith then asks Quentin’s grandmother to keep it—to destroy it, for all she cares. She laments how “little impression” people make in life, merely “mixed up” with other people, as though they’re all strings on a loom. Each wants to make their own pattern, and none of it matters—otherwise, whoever set up the loom would’ve done it better.
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In the present, Mr. Compson hands the letter to Quentin. Quentin takes it and opens it carefully, as though it’s merely “the intact ash of its former shape” and no longer the paper itself. Mr. Compson continues speaking. From reading the letter, he assures Quentin, Quentin will understand that Bon did love Judith, though the letters that came before this one were full of floral and romantic—yet ultimately shallow—sentiments. Mr. Compson goes on talking, but Quentin stops hearing him as he reads the letter.
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The letter is undated, but from its contents Quentin learns it’s 1865. In the letter, Bon talks of the hardship and suffering he’s experienced serving in the war. Then he declares to Judith, “We have waited long enough.” But Bon can’t say when he’ll be back. Cryptically, Bon describes how the thing that “was” “died in 1861, and therefore what IS […] is redundancy too […].” But in some ways, Bon counters, he feels that “it has never stopped.”
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Bon’s letter continues, restating that he can’t tell Judith when he’ll be back. He notes that he wrote his letter “with the best […] of the new North” which has defeated the South. He concludes his letter with a grave declaration: “I now believe that you and I are, strangely enough, included among those who are doomed to live.”
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In the present, Quentin finishes reading the letter. Mr. Compson explains that Clytie and Judith got to work making Judith’s wedding gown after Judith received this letter. They made the veil from scraps of fabrics. Maybe Bon showed Henry the letter before sending it, Mr. Compson suggests. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he simply told Henry of his plans for Judith, and Henry, in response, continued to demand that Bon renounce the other woman and her child. Henry (in Mr. Compson’s imagination) would have demanded that Bon not “pass the shadow of this post, this Branch,” and Bon would have defied Henry. And all this leads to the point in the story when Wash Jones approaches Rosa Coldfield’s house to announce that Henry killed Bon.
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