WizIQ discussion 1

In our discussion on Friday, we noted three important themes: 1) generativity of the soil and the stranger in the strange land; 2) tragic fatalism of the South and providential curses; 3) predatory masculinity. These themes manifested themselves in the four anchor passages that we reviewed: 1) Rosa's narration of the founding of Sutpen's Hundred on pp.1 and 2; 2) Coldfield's meeting with Sutpen in church pp.16-17; 3) Ellen's marriage to Sutpen pp.38-44; 4)Henry and Bon in New Orleans pp.86-97.

For tonight's discussion, let us begin with the three women waiting for Sutpen on p.128. This anchor passage punctuates the second half of Chapter V. Some sentences of particular note are the following

a) We led the busy eventless lives of three nunsin a barren and poverty-stricken convent: the walls we had were safe, impervious enough, even if it did not matterto the walls whether we ate or not.p.128
b)Judith created by circumstance (circumstance? a hundred years of careful nurturing, perhaps not by blood, not even Coldfield blood, but certainly by the tradition in which Thomas Sutpen's ruthless will had carved a niche) to pass through the soft insulated and unscathed cocoon stages: bud, served prolific queen, then potent and soft-handed patriarch of old age's sereneand well-lived content-- Judith handicapped by what in me wasa few years' ignorance but which in her was ten generations of iron prohibition, who had not learned that first lesson of penury which is to scrimp and save for the sake of scrimping and saving, who (abetted by Clytie) would cook twice what we could eat and three times what we could afford and give it to anyone, any stranger in a land already beginning to fill with straggling soldiers who stopped and asked for it p.129
c) We were three strangers. I do not know what Clytie thought, what life she led which the food we raised and cooked in unison, the cloth we spun together, nourished and sheltered. But I expected that because she and I were open, ay honorable, enemies. p.130
d) We talked of him, Thomas Sutpen, of the end of the War ( we could all see it now) and when he would return, of what he would do: how begin the Herculean task which he knew he would set himself, into which (oh yes, we knew this too) he would undoubtedly sweep us with the old ruthlessness whether we would or no; we talked of Henry, quietly-- that normal useless impotent woman-worrying about the absent male-- as to how he fared, if he were cold or hungry or not, just as we talked of his father, as if they and we still lived in that time which that shot , those running mad feet, had put a period to and then obliterated, as though that afternoon had never been. But not once did we mention Charles Bon.p.130
e) It took me just three months. (Do you mind how I dont say he, but I?) Yes, I, just three months, who for twenty years had looked on him (when I did-- had to--look) as an ogre, some beast out of a tale to frighten children with; who had sen his own get upon my dead sister's body already begin to destroy one another, yet who must come to him like a whistled dog at that first opportunity, that noon when he who had been seeing me for twenty years should first raise his head and pause and look at me.