Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Tue, 2014-07-29 08:52
The Bundrens' house is located at the top of a steep bluff, across the road from their cotton field. The house is described as "Tilting a little down the hill . . . a breeze draws through the hall all the time, upslanting" (19). To one side of the hall is the bedroom in which Addie dies. The bedroom window looks out to the yard near the front of the house where Cash builds her coffin. The house has a back porch that looks out over the ridge toward the rest of the farm, but the barn is not visible from it (59).
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Tue, 2014-07-29 08:50
In her section of As I Lay Dying Addie remembers the first time she met Anse, and mentioned his "good farm" (171). Apparently that and his "new house" are important factors in her decision to marry him. There's no suggestion in the novel that the Bundrens are sharecroppers, but like many of the other small cotton farmers in their part of Yoknapatawpha it's clear that they have to struggle for subsistence. The farm sits below the bluff that the house is built on top of.
