Farquhar’s Wife Character Analysis

Farquhar’s wife never actually enters the story. She and their children are conjured in Farquhar’s mind in the moments before his hanging, however, and become more symbol than character in the process. Nevertheless, Bierce spares a few sentences describing her for the reader. She’s pictured as beautiful and feminine, “with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity.” Bierce use terms of purity and matronly comfort—seen through Farquhar’s eyes and driving him on after his supposed escape. Yet she too, is seen as a part of the same Southern society that Farquhar risks execution to save. When the Union spy arrives at their doorstep, she is “only too happy to serve him with her own white hands.” That suggests that she’s not accustomed to waiting on people—an aristocrat—and that most of her servants are black (and presumably slaves). Like her husband, she belongs to the Confederacy, and all her good manners still serve the corrupt institutions the Confederacy is trying to protect.