Worsham|Habersham House (Location Key)

Because we treat Belle Worsham (in Go Down, Moses) and Eunice Habersham (in Intruder in the Dust) as the same Character, we treat the houses they each live in as the same Location. In both the short story and novel versions of Moses, the dilapidated Worsham house sits on the edge of town. It has a "paintless door," and "the entire house was still lighted by oil lamps and there was no running water in it" (263, 360-61). Belle Worsham, the current proprietor, inherited the house from her father, Samuel Worsham, whose father built it before the Civil War. Inside it Mollie Beauchamp, Hamp Worsham, his wife, Belle Worsham, and - at least for a few moments - Gavin Stevens gather in a "clean, spare bedroom with its unmistakable faint odor of old maidens" to mourn Samuel Worsham Beauchamp's death (263, 361). There is a "hard chair," a rocking chair, and a brick hearth in the room (263, 361). In Intruder Eunice Habersham similarly lives in an old house - specifically, a "columned colonial house" - "on the edge of town"; it has "not been painted since her father died and had neither water nor electricity in it" (74). Unlike the newer houses in town, set close to the street on narrow lots, hers is typical of "the old big decaying wooden houses of Jefferson's long-ago foundation," set back in a large lawn of "old trees and rootbound scented and flowering shrubs" (117). This novel suggests which "edge of town" - someplace south of the Square - by way of Chick's comic fantasy of Miss Habersham driving home at the end of a long strange trip (cf. 183).