Roth Edmonds

"Roth," the name by which this Edmonds is known, is short for "Carothers"; he is the son of Zack and Louisa Edmonds, and the great-great-great grandson of Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin. Because Roth's mother died in childbirth, Molly Beauchamp is "the only mother he, Edmonds, ever knew" (113), and Lucas and Molly's son Henry was Roth's childhood playmate. In the narrative present of most of the novel (i.e. c1940) Roth is the current owner of McCaslin plantation. In his forties, Roth has an affair with a young woman who, unbeknownst to him, is also descended from Lucius McCaslin, on the Beauchamp or 'black' side of the family. Because they are cousins, even though several times removed, their affair recalls the incestuous and miscegenous relationship between "Old Carothers" and his enslaved daughter; like his great-great-great grandfather and namesake, Roth refuses to acknowledge the child that is produced from that affair as his son.