Unnamed Young Girls 3

The "chosen young girls in white dresses bound at the waist with crimson sashes" whom Shreve imagines in Absalom! are decked out for a "Decoration Day" ceremony "fifty years" after Bon's June visit to Sutpen's Hundred (262). "Decoration Day" is better known as "Confederate Memorial Day," out of which the U.S. Memorial Day holiday eventually came. It was first observed soon after the Civil War ended, and in fact is still unofficially observed in some places in the South - in April, however, not "June" (262).