Mrs. Virginius MacCallum 1

In Flags in the Dust Virginius MacCallum has two wives. Both have died before the novel takes place. The first of them was clearly a country girl of humble origins: her dowry consisted of a clock and "a dressed hog" (332). The novel does not mention anything else about her, but what it says later about the second wife - Buddy's mother, from whom he gets his coloring - suggests this wife was the mother of Virginius' five other sons: unlike Buddy, for instance, they all have "brown eyes and black hair" (354). In "The Tall Men" Anse McCallum (Faulkner's new names for Virginius) has only been married once, so we assume the Mrs. Anse McCallum who is buried beside her husband in the family graveyard in that short story is this 'first wive' from Flags.