Joanna Burden
Text:
Character Key:
Display Name:
Joanna Burden
Sort Name:
Burden, Joanna
Race:
White
Gender:
Female
Class:
Middle Class
Rank:
Major
Vitality:
Dies
Occupation:
Other
First Mentioned:
Date of Birth:
Sunday, January 1, 1888 to Monday, December 31, 1888
Origin:
Yoknapatawpha
Cause of Death:
Murder
Other Texts:
Biography:
Joanna Burden is a middle-aged spinster who has lived in the “old colonial plantation house” (36) outside Jefferson since she was born, yet “she is still a stranger, a foreigner whose people moved in from the North during Reconstruction” (46). Byron Bunch tells Lena Grove that Joanna is "a Yankee" (53). Nurturing and helpful to local Negroes, and a contributor to and supporter of many Negro schools and colleges across the South, she is regarded by the townspeople as a “Yankee, a lover of Negroes.” She is forty-something when she begins her complex and ultimately fatal relationship with Joe Christmas. Her death at his hands transforms her standing with the white townspeople.
Note:
Keywords: Yankee, spinster, Northerners, "lover of negroes"
Property Status:
owns house
Individual or Group:
Individual
Character changes class in this text:
digyok:node/character/3901