In Faulkner’s style of using different points of view to reveal both attitudes of the characters and to give another insight that may be unknown to the other characters, I stumbled upon a nugget of information that I’m not sure whether I missed in reading or if Faulkner indeed has employed the process to inject this surprise:
“if he hadn’t been a demon his children wouldn’t have needed protection from him and she wouldn’t have had to go out there and be betrayed by the old meat and find instead of a widowed Agamemnon to her Cassandra an ancient stiff-jointed Pyramus to her eager though untried Thisbe who could approach her in this unbidden April’s compounded demonry and suggest that they breed together for test and sample and if it was a boy they would marry;” (p. 177)
The speaker here is Quentin’s roommate who is reciting his understanding of what Quentin has told him regarding Miss Rosa and the Sutpen history, so the story here defined once again by an outsider, is based on Quentin’s understanding of it as he received the information from his father and Miss Rosa directly. Now besides the allegory of mythical couples, Faulkner drops in the bit about Sutpen’s rather blunt and unromantic demand that Miss Rosa first provide him with a male heir before any nuptials need be taken.
In the previous chapter, which featured the story from Miss Rosa herself, it seems she did not reveal the horror which had her racing from the mansion back to her own father’s house in town. There was bitterness, yes, but is this the first time I’m reading of the actually insult? Did I miss it before, perhaps sleepy-eyed and dense and lost in Faulkner’s prose? If not, it is sheer genius to startle the reader this way.
If I missed it, my apologies to William Faulkner.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology