Caddy Compson

Submitted by napolinj@newsch... on Wed, 2014-04-02 14:38
Text: 
The Sound and the Fury
Character Key: 
Candace Compson
Display Name: 
Caddy Compson
Sort Name: 
Compson, Caddy
Parent: 
Mr. Jason Compson
Mrs. Caroline Compson
AKA: 
Candace Compson
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Female
Class: 
Upper Class
Rank: 
Major
Vitality: 
Alive-ghost
Family: 
Compson
Family (new): 
CompsonsInSF
First Mentioned: 
Compson Inset: House in The Sound and the Fury (Location)
Home: 
Compson Place in The Sound and the Fury (Location)
Date of Birth: 
Friday, January 1, 1892 to Saturday, December 31, 1892
Other Texts: 
"A Justice"
"Appendix: Compson"
"That Evening Sun"
The Mansion
Biography: 

Candace Compson is the second child and only daughter of Jason and Caroline Compson. Faulkner often referred to her character as his "heart's darling." Attractive, caring, active, in some respects braver and even more conventionally masculine than any of her brothers, she is nonetheless trapped inside a complex set of circumstances: her dysfunctional and very needy family, Southern codes of female respectability, and her own biology. During her adolescence she seems to turn to sex as a kind of refuge from these sources of frustration, but that results in her pregnancy, a desperate and failed marriage, an illegitimate daughter whom she knows she cannot take care of, and her mother's refusal to allow her back in the family home. After her wedding in April, 1910, she returns to Jefferson only rarely and briefly, but she is a constant and haunting presence in her brothers' minds. In a sense, her absence is the center of the novel.

Note: 
Candace Compson was the second child and only daughter of Jason Lycurgas Compson III and Caroline Bascomb Compson. In February 1910, she became pregnant, likely by Dalton Almes, a local boy in Jefferson. She would name the child after her brother Quentin. In April 25, 1910 at Compson Place, she married Sydney Herbert Head after meeting him, according to the Appendix, while "vacationing at French Lick the summer before" with mother. The couple then took up residence in South Bend Indiana, and in 1911, he divorced her. According to the Appendix, in 1920 she remarried a minor Hollywood magnate, divorcing again in Mexico in 1925. After leaving her infant daughter Quentin at Compson Place, she was blackmailed by her brother, Jason Compson, IV, both into staying away and into appointing him the sole trustee of funds for her daughter's maintenance. These funds were stolen by Jason, but then retrieved by daughter Quentin in 1928 when she ran away with the pitchman. According to the Appendix, Caddy "vanished in Paris with the German occupation, 1940."
Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/3945