Mrs. Carothers McCaslin

Submitted by sfr on Thu, 2019-01-17 13:34
Character Key Number: 
130
Display Name: 
Mrs. Carothers McCaslin
Sort Name: 
McCaslin, Mrs. Carothers
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

The wife of Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin, the slave-owning patriarch at the head of the McCaslin, Beauchamp, Edmonds and Priest families in Faulkner's late fictions, is mentioned only once, in The Reivers. It is her Bible that Ned, the only one of her husband's illegitimate and biracial descendants who is named McCaslin rather than Beauchamp, carries in his bag - a symbolic gesture that is extremely interesting and opaque. Lucius identifies her as "Great-great-grandmother McCaslin" (69), but based on the McCaslin genealogy as developed in detail in Go Down, Moses, he should have added one more "great."

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