Article: Women, landscape and the legacy of Gilgamesh in 'Absalom, Absalom!' and 'Go Down, Moses.'

In explaining Absalom, Absalom! to his editor Hal Smith, Faulkner said, "the theme is a man who outraged the land, and the land then turned and destroyed the man's family."(1) This seems an odd claim. The actions of Thomas Sutpen which could be called outrages are betrayals of women and children: putting aside his Haitian wife when he discovers she has "Negro blood," refusing to acknowledge his son by that wife, failing to inform his wife Ellen and daughter Judith and son Henry about this previous wife and son, proposing to Rosa Coldfield that she prove her fertility to him as a prerequisite to marriage, and finally rejecting Milly Jones because she bears him a daughter. ...

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