Rosa+(Granny)+Millard

Rosa Millard (Granny) is the matriarch of the Sartoris family in //The Unvanquished.// She is the mother-in-law of Colonel John Sartoris, looking after his household during the Civil War. Though Bayard is her actual grandson, Ringo also refers to her as Granny, as she treats most of the slaves in her home like family. She is in many ways the traditional southern woman, deeply religious and obsessed with family legacy and the southern code. She is also in many ways a rebel woman, lying to soldiers and going against her moral code for the survival of her family.

We first meet Granny in the first chapter Ambuscade. In this chapter she hides Ringo and Bayard under her skirt after they have accidentally shot a soldier and a horse. When the other soldiers come to the house and question her, knowing full and well that the boys are under her skirt, she tells them there are no children in the house. After the men leave she prays for forgiveness for lying. She then punishes the boys, not for killing a man but for using a swear word, and makes them wash their mouths out with soap. This contrast of rebellion and forgiveness is something that we see Granny struggle with throughout her story.

Granny’s rebellion against her own morality and character is shown throughout the story. Her most notable defiance of morality is in Riposte in Tertio, where we learn about her long running scam. Using the letterhead from her son-in-law, she requisitions mules from the army, burns off their US branding, and sells them back to the army for profit. When she is questioned about the mules she feigns ignorance, lying once again just like she did in the beginning in Ambuscade. Later on in the chapter, we find her at a church asking the people to pray for her sins, and she later says the words:

//"I did not sin for revenge; I defy You or anyone to say I did. I sinned first for justice. And after that first time, I sinned for more than justice: I sinned for the sake of food and clothes for Your own creatures who could not help themselves; for children who had given their fathers, for wives who had given their husbands, for old people who had given their sons, to a holy cause, even though You have seen fit to make it a lost cause" (147).//

In using the money for the greater good, lending it to the needy and to take care of her family, she feels that her actions are both sinful and yet justifiable. Many of her actions that are not exactly "lady-like" stem from her desire to protect her family, not only from their immediate dangers but for their future. Throughout the story we see this obsession with her family silver. In Retreat, Granny asks that the chest be carried up to her room for the night, where she uncharacteristically locks the door, "Since I could remember, there had never been a key to any door, inside or outside the house. Yet we had heard a key turn in the lock" (42). Later in that chapter when they are on the road to Memphis she wants to stay with the silver in the wagon rather than rest in the farmhouse in the fear it may be stolen. It is later stolen when @Loosh shows the Yankees where the silver is buried, to which she says "But the silver belongs to John Sartoris, who are you to give it away" (75). Her families survival during and after the war is the most important thing to Granny, and she will not anyone get in the way of her assurance that things can return back to normal after the war is over. Unfortunately, she never gets to see how things turn out.

In accordance to her southern code, and her role as an elderly southern Robin Hood, she is convinced to go after Grumby, who is a bad man and therefore deserves to be scammed. Ironically it is her belief in the southern code that gets her killed. In the last pages of Riposte in Tertio, Granny decides to confront Grumby and says her last words://"It's for all of us," she said—"for John, and you, and Ringo and Joby and Louvinia. So we will have something when John comes back home. You never cried when you knew he was going into a battle, did you? And now I am taking no risk: I am a woman. Even Yankees do not harm old women" (Faulkner 152-153).// She sees herself as in the same position as Col. Sartoris, the head of the household, and since the boys don’t cry when he leaves they should feel the same way about her. Except she isn’t like the Bayard’s father, she is the very present protector of the family, including the slaves. At her funeral Bayard writes, "I don't reckon that anybody that ever knew her would want to insult her by telling her to rest anywhere in peace. And I reckon that God has already seen to it that there are men women and children, black white yellow or red, waiting for her to tend and worry over" (158). Overall, Granny is the hero of the south, doing what is just for the betterment of everyone in the south.