101. Class and the South

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Absalom

Struck me last night how inert and sexless Sutpen's Mississippi children are. I guess when you are using characters like puppets to talk about Race in the South it's hard to have them also be well-rounded. Neither Henry nor Judith nor even Clytie appear to have a hormone among them. Is that supposed to be meaningful as well? The only one of his children to spawn is Charles Bon with that touch of African blood. And he only actually mates with the Octaroon, and their child, the just covered Charles Etienne chooses a mate who is compared to an ape. 

And Rosa is almost as bad.  

Chapter VII

p220-238 This passage is too long to quote, I think, but it is possibly the core of the book, or of what the book is trying to explain. The "state of nature" Quentin describes Sutpen as coming from, in what would become West Virginia after the Civil War, was similar to the status quo of America before the English colonized, or the way much of Africa was organized. You could see Sutpen's people as having been driven from Great Britain by the Enclosures and the Clearances. Land ownership, and the dominion over the people who worked the land, by the class of people who owned the land, reestablished itself in the southern colonies because of the cultivation of cash crops like tobacco and cotton. The Founding Fathers were truly the descendants of the masters of Roman latifundia, creating a new Republic in the American wilds upon the foundation of Roman notions of land ownership. All the rest, from then to now, follows naturally. 

It's a nice touch that Sutpen's family travels to Tidewater Virginia and in particular to the mouth of the James, as this area was such a crucial battlefield during the war. Sutpen's regiment would have fought in this area, possibly several times. Though I suppose they were still in the west for the first campaign in 1862. 

It occurs to me now that I've been wrong all along thinking this book is primarily about Race and the South, it is just as much about Class and the South. The role Wash Jones plays being the best clue. But the role the underclass plays in the town's dealings with Sutpen leading up to and including his wedding also point to this. Which addresses the most puzzling aspect of the American Civil War, the eagerness of poor whites to become canon fodder for the ruling class that Sutpen so determinedly became a part of. 

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