Sutpen's+Hundred

Sutpen’s Hundred is the title given to the plantation that Thomas Sutpen created after purchasing 100 square miles of land in northwestern Yoknapatawpha County. He erected a large mansion on the land twelve miles from the town of Jefferson. The mansion was constructed in 1833 and destroyed by fire in 1909. Faulkner uses the mansion on Sutpen's Hundred as a central location of his novel, //Absalom, Absalom!// and it serves to represent the execution and fulfillment of Thomas Sutpen's Great Design, as well as a symbol for the dying mode of patriarchy in the antebellum South.

There are two conflicting descriptions of the creation of the mansion, one given by Mr. Compson (but heard through Quentin’s memory) and another by Ms. Rosa Coldfield. Mr. Compson states Sutpen would “…watch his mansion rise, carried plank by plank and brick by brick out of the swamp where the clay and timber waited- the bearded white man and the twenty black ones and all stark naked beneath the croaching and pervading mud (AA 27-28).” Alia Yap suggests that this image of the man and mansion emerging simultaneously from the swamp is evocative of a birthing process, and that the mud and swamp are the progenitors (Yap 12). She then states that Ms. Rosa presents a creationist counterpoint with her description: “…suddenly the hundred square miles of tranquil and astonished earth and drag house and formal gardens violently out of the soundless Nothing and clap them down like cards on a table beneath the up-palm immobile and pontific, creating the Sutpen’s Hundred, the //Be Sutpen’s Hundred// like the oldentime //Be Light// (AA 4).” Yap proposes that this reflects the Biblical linguistic marker of “Let there Be Light” and the replacement of physical labor with action of speech. The Thomas Sutpen presented in her memory is “immaculate, statuesque (Yap 13)” – and in direct contrast to the image provided by Compson. Yap also argues that Sutpen uses language as an authoritative tool. Although Sutpen’s Hundred was built by slaves, Sutpen identifies himself with the Sutpen’s Hundred. It is both the execution and realization of his Grand Design. Sutpen oversees the creation in silence, except to give orders thereby deifying his voice: his voice creates his world, his design and himself. His plantation is the “corporeal form that his deified voice assumes (Yap 14).”
 * Creation of the Mansion **

The reader is only able to see Sutpen’s Hundred, and the mansion that lays upon it through memory. Although Quentin has visited it before and does so again with Ms. Rosa, the depictions of the mansion are all through memory. This style of showing the mansion only through memories helps contribute to the mystique of Sutpen’s Hundred, as we can only take Quentin, or Ms. Rosa at their word of their own re-imagination. This contributes to what could be exaggeration about the mansion and the land it rests on, and the mythical existence of a 100 square mile plot of land in between the Tallahatchie River and Jefferson within a county that spans only 2400 square miles in its entirety. Ms. Rosa describes the mansion as “a house the size of a courthouse… (AA 16)” Her more vivid description of the house in its decay depicts it with “//Rotting portico and scaling walls, it stood, not ravaged, not invaded, marked by no bullet nor soldier’s iron heel but rather as though reserved for something more: some desolation more profound than ruin, as if it had stood in iron juxtaposition to iron flame, to a holocaust which had found itself less fierce and less implacable, not hurled but rather fallen back before the impervious and indomitable skeleton which the flames durst not, at the instant’s final crisis, assail…// (AA 136).” Quentin describes the mansion as he saw it on a quail hunting trip with his father, sometime in between 1900 and 1909: “…where the wet yellow sedge died upward into the rain like melting gold and saw the grove, the clump of cedars on the crest of the hill dissolving into the rain as if the trees had been drawn in ink on a wet blotter – the cedars beyond which, beyond the ruined fields beyond which, would be the oak grove and the gray huge rotting deserted house half a mile away (AA 187).” Quentin describes it again as a “//rotting pile of what had once been log walls and stone chimneys and shingle roofs among the undergrowth// Calvin Brown, in his //Glossary of Faulkner’s South// states that he attempted to go to the junction of Davidson’s Creek and the Tallahatchie River (both of which exist in Lafayette County, MI) and identify where Faulkner meant to place Sutpen’s Hundred. His only definitive answer is that the mansion would have “been in the hills overlooking the creek and river bottom somewhere near the end of this road [State Route 314] (Brown 194).”
 * Depictions of the Mansion **

It should be noted that the existence of Sutpen’s Hundred is wholly unrealistic in terms of actual dimensions, in relation to Yoknapatawpha County. It seems that Faulkner would have been aware of this and purposefully created Sutpen’s plantation to be larger than life; its mythic proportions would contribute to the atmosphere created by the style of the novel- which is mainly different narrators relating memories about events in which Sutpen’s Hundred was a central location. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">John Pilkington states that there were no shortages of old antebellum plantation houses (both well-kept and rotting) within the Oxford, MI area and that more than one could have provided the inspiration for Sutpen’s mansion. He also states that Faulkner himself lived in one of these well preserved houses that he acquired in 1930, around the time this novel was written (Pilkington 161). Faulkner moved into Rowan Oak in 1930, which had been built in 1844 by Colonel Robert B. Shegog, who commissioned an English architect to construct a house with “columns and portico and landscaped in front with a cedar lined drive, brick bordered flower beds and magnolia trees (Pilkington 161).” <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Scholars such as Pilkington, Brown and Elizabeth Kerr have tried to place historical basis on Faulkner’s creation of such an estate. Pilkington notes that A.H. Pegues owned 5,000 acres of land in Oxford County during the Civil War and that his brother Colonel Thomas Pegues owned vast tracts of land and had a house designed by an architect with a “French sounding name” (Pilkington 161). However, Kerr states that A.H Pegues only possessed about 2,400 acres of land, which is less than half of what Pilkington reports it to be. She also notes that A.H. Pegues career superficially resembled Sutpen’s before the war (Kerr 55). Either way, both figures represent less than ten square miles and are dwarfed by Sutpen’s holdings: 100 square miles is equal to 64,000 acres of land.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Faulkner’s Inspiration **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Kerr references a large Virginia plantation known as Berkley Hundred as inspiration for the name. She quotes Clifford Dowdey in stating the moniker of “Hundred” came from the amount of settlers that would be an ideal figure for a plantation or the basic grant of a share of stock in the plantation.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">It is made clear that when Sutpen rode into town looking to buy a large tract of land with that “Spanish gold (AA, 34)” he had a larger plan in mind. It would seem that this purchase was just the beginning phase of his Grand Design, a plan that he had been working to see to fruition since he was a teenager. The reader learns about an afternoon in Sutpen’s childhood that dictates much of his future: A young Sutpen, 13-14 years old, is sent by his father to deliver a message to a wealthy plantation owner. He approaches the front door, only to be told by a black servant to go around to the back. Pilkington writes, “As a result of this experience Sutpen formulates a design to acquire, take, seize, by whatever means possible, the possessions that will prevent him from ever being humiliated again and give him the same or greater place in society than that held by the wealthy plantation owner (Pilkington 172).” Sutpen is never able to escape his past, a theme that permeates through many of Faulkner’s works. Haunted by an experience that he can never shake, he bases his whole life around a goal that would prevent a similar experience and validate his own insecurities created by that experience.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Sutpen’s Inspiration **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Created in 1833 and fallen into decay by 1869, the mansion on Sutpen’s Hundred serves as a symbol for the dying patriarchy of the antebellum south. Risen to power through the labor of black slaves and relegated to slow, rotting decay after the Civil War, the mansion mirrors the process that the male-dominated economy underwent in the antebellum period. Sutpen’s desire to hold on to his old ways after the war ended is highlighted when it is stated that “//if every man in the South would do as he himself was doing, would see to the restoration of his own land, the general land and South would save itself”(AA 161).// This attempt by Sutpen to resist the inevitable change represents the general mindset of plantation owners in the South after the war was over and the rebuilding process began.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The Mansion as a symbol of the Old Patriarchy in the South **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Relating back to that formative experience in which Sutpen was perennially embarrassed by the wealthy plantation owner, the mansion he created served to be symbol of his Great Design come to fruition. It is the site of his son(s) birth and death, it is the site of ultimate masculinity for the first three years of its existence and it is the foundation of his would-be dynasty. Pilkington writes “From beginning to end, the mansion is the center of the story….Sutpen’s mansion is to //Absalom, Absalom!// what the scaffold is to Hawthorne’s //The Scarlet Letter// and the //Pequod// is to Melville’s //Moby-Dick”// (Pilkington 162). It is his beginning and his end and the house is left in the same state as his legacy: rotting in ruin.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The Mansion as a symbol of Sutpen’s Great Design **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__June 1833__ – Thomas Sutpen purchases “…a hundred square miles of some of the best virgin bottom land in the country (AA 34)” from Chief Ikkemotubbe.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Timeline of Notable Events and Inhabitants of Sutpen’s Hundred **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__August 1833__ – Thomas Sutpen makes his return to Jefferson with a French architect and a wagon load of “wild negroes (AA 36)” who do not speak English.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1835-6__ – After two years spent constructing the mansion Jefferson, it stands ”Unpainted and unfurnished, without a pane of glass or a doorknob or hinge in it, twelve miles from town…it stood for three years more surrounded by its formal gardens and promenades, its slave quarters and stables and smokehouses…(AA 39)”

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1836-39__ – Thomas Sutpen borrows seed from General Compson and plants cotton, turning Sutpen’s Hundred into a proper plantation (Pilkington 173). He also begins to hold what Ms. Rosa calls “spectacles (AA 40)”, which were fights between his slaves. He himself would sometimes partake in these fights.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__December 1859__ – Henry Sutpen brings Charles Bon to Sutpen’s Hundred for the first time and Ellen Coldfied first mentions him as a potential suitor for Judith Sutpen.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1864__ – Thomas Sutpen journeys home from the war (temporarily) to drop off tombstones for Ellen’s grave and his own.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1865__ – Henry Sutpen kills Charles Bon at the gates of the Sutpen Mansion.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1865__ – Rosa Coldfield is brought to Sutpen’s Hundred by Wash Jones and lives there until 1867 (Pilkington 175).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__January 1866__ – Thomas Sutpen returns to Sutpen’s Hundred after the war.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1869__- Wash Jones murders Thomas Sutpen, his (Wash’s) grand-daughter, and their (Sutpen’s and grand-daughter’s) child on Sutpen’s Hundred.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1869__ – Major de Spain buys a portion of Sutpen’s Hundred near the Tallahatchie River after Thomas Sutpen’s death and turns it into a hunting camp, later to be seen in “The Bear” (Pilkington 162).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__Summer 1870__ – Bon’s mistress and Charles Etienne Saint-Valery Bon visit Sutpen’s Hundred and stay for a week with Judith and Clytemnestra

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__December 1871__ – Charles Etienne Saint-Valery Bon comes to live at Sutpen’s Hundred with Judith and Clytemnestra

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1881__ – Charles Etienne leaves Sutpen’s Hundred

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1882__ – Charles Etienne returns to Sutpen’s Hundred with “a coal black and ape-like woman and an authentic wedding license (AA 205).” Their son, Jim Bond, is born in a slave cabin that Charles Etienne has rebuilt on Sutpen’s Hundred <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">(Pilkington 175). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1884__ – Smallpox is contracted among those who live on Sutpen’s Hundred, killing Charles Etienne and Judith Sutpen.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__1905__ – Henry Sutpen returns to Sutpen’s Hundred and lives in the mansion with Clytie

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">__December 1909__ – Quentin and Ms. Rosa go to Sutpen’s Hundred; Clytie mistakenly believes they have called the police to arrest Henry for the murder of Charles Bon and sets the mansion on fire, killing herself and Henry in the conflagration (Pilkington 161).

Brown, Calvin. //Glossary of Faulkner's South//. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. 194. Print.

Faulkner, William. //Absalom, Absalom!//. New York: Vintage International, 1985. Print.

Kerr, Elizabeth. //Yoknapatawpha: "Little Postage Stamp of Native Soil"//. New York: Fordham University Press, 1969. 55, 246. Print.

Pilkington, John. //The Heart of Yoknapatawpha//. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 1981. 161-162, 172-175. Print.

Yap, Alia. //Remembering bodies// : //subject formation in the neo-plantation narrative//. 2008. 12-14. Web. <http://www.books.google.com/books?isbn=0549835938>.