CompsonsInUV

When Faulkner revised the stories Bayard narrates into the novel The Unvanquished, the passages depicting or referring to the Compsons remain almost entirely unchanged. General Compson makes a brief appearance in the final story, "An Odor of Verbena," the one story that had not been previously published. His appearance there makes it even more likely that in all but one of the stories, the "Mrs. Compson" to whom Rosa Millard turns for various kinds of help, and who offers to take Bayard and Ringo in after Rosa's death, is the General's wife. But it also leaves unexplained the way the "Mrs. Compson" who appears in "Skirmish at Sartoris" has an "only husband" who "had been locked up for crazy a long time ago" (193). Our chart reflects this inconsistency by including two "Mrs. Compson"s, with two different husbands - but this doesn't resolve the problem, because except for her husband, the "Mrs. Compson" in "Skirmish" seems identical to the "Mrs Compson" in every other story. This is one of those Faulknerian cases where it seems impossible to create a definitive genealogy.