Courthouse and Square in Absalom, Absalom! (Location)

The courthouse in Jefferson sits at the center of Courthouse Square, which sits at the center of the town of Jefferson and the county of Yoknapatawpha. As a location it appears in most of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions. Absalom, Absalom! describes the Square at several different periods. In 1833, when Sutpen appears there - or as Rosa imagines it, "abrupts" onto a "scene peaceful and decorous as a school-prize watercolor" (4) while church bells ring and "ladies" in hoop skirts "did not walk but floated" to services under parasols carried by "house negroes" (23) - the village in and around the Square consists of the courthouse, six stores, a blacksmith/livery stable, a saloon, three churches, the Holston House hotel, and "perhaps thirty residences" (24). By the late 1850s, the town has grown to "twenty stores" - many of which were arrayed around the Square (54). Chapter 6 includes a scene inside the courthouse (163).