McCaslin, Mrs. Isaac

The novel identifies Ike as a "widower" twice on its first page (5). His wife - possibly the daughter of the bank president who hires Ike and his partner to put a new roof on his stable - remains in the background for most of the novel, but in her brief appearances Faulkner emphasizes her hostility, as Ike meets her "tense bitter indomitable voice" with a posture of familiarity (104). Ike's wife considers the McCaslin plantation Ike's property, and her husband a fool for handing it over to Cass Emonds. When Ike first meets her, "an only child, a small girl yet curiously bigger than she seemed at first . . . with dark eyes and a passionate heart-shaped face," she makes her ambition and desire to escape clear to the reader, if not to Ike: "Papa told me about you. That farm is really yours, isn't it?" (296).