Roth Edmonds' Child

Submitted by sfr on Thu, 2019-01-17 14:41
Character Key Number: 
172
Display Name: 
Roth Edmonds' Child
Sort Name: 
Unnamed Child of James Beauchamp's Granddaughter and Roth Edmonds
Parent Character Key: 
Unnamed Granddaughter of James Beauchamp
Carothers Roth Edmonds
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
No
Biography: 

The end of the McCaslin-Edmonds-Beauchamp family line in Go Down, Moses appears essentially as a "blanket-swaddled bundle" (340) being carried by his mother; he is the illegitimate child of Roth Edmonds and Edmonds's mistress, the granddaughter of James Beauchamp. Roth and the young mother are distantly related, making their child the multi-racial product of incest; this an echo of Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin's impregnation of Tomey, the slave girl who was also his daughter. Roth's rejection of his son means that the child will be raised by his mother, who is planning to return to the North where she grew up. (An earlier version of this character appears in the short story version of "Delta Autumn"; see the entry for Unnamed Infant 3 in this index. The short story and the chapter in the novel are both titled "Delta Autumn," and are almost identical, but by making this infant the youngest descendant of Carothers McCaslin, Faulkner entirely transforms his significance in the larger story of Yoknapatawpha.)

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