Compson Place in "Appendix: Compson" (Location)

In addition to the story of the Compson family, the "Appendix" tells the story of the place where they live. It begins as the "Compson Domain" (329): a "solid square mile" of "forested" land that the first Yoknapatawpha Compson acquires from the Chickasaw Indians in 1813 (328). "Twenty years later," it is a large cotton plantation, "with its slavequarters and stables and kitchengardens," "formal lawns and promenades and pavilions," and a "columned porticoed house" designed by an architect and furnished from France (328). The place goes into decline after the Civil War, until by the 20th century "what was left" of the property, "now known merely as the Compson place," consists of "the weedchoked traces of the old ruined lawns and promenades, the house which had needed painting too long already, [and] the scaling columns of the portico" (329-30). In the 1920s it is called "the old Compson place," even though still occupied by Compsons; they sell the last major piece of the land "to a golfclub" (330). In the 1930s the house itself is sold "to a countryman who operated it as a boarding-house" (331). Not long after that the house is torn down and "the old square mile" of land turned into a housing development: "row after row of small crowded jerrybuilt individuallyowned demiurban bungalows" (331). We represent this Location on the map as a 'mansion,' which it is between the early 1800s and 1940 or so, but in the "Appendix" the place begins as primordial wilderness and ends as a modern development.