The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

"Mrs. Sutpen" is barely mentioned in "Wash," though readers learn that she died during the Civil War, in the same winter that Sutpen's son was killed in action. In Absalom, Absalom!, she is identified as the daughter of Jefferson's merchant Goodhue Coldfield and the sister of Rosa Coldfield.

These are the enslaved people in "Wash" who call Wash "white trash behind his back" (536), and to his face pointedly ask him "Why ain't you at de war, white man?" (537). When they do that, Wash can see their "white eyes and teeth behind which derision lurked" (537). "Most" of Sutpen's slaves leave to follow the Union army toward freedom after "Sherman passes through the plantation" (537).

During the Civil War, Sherman served as a General in the Union army, and saw extensive service in the war's western theater. He is mentioned twice in "Wash." First by the narrator, who notes that after "Sherman had passed through [Sutpen's] plantation," most of the enslaved "Negroes had followed him," looking to emancipate themselves (537). (Historically, Sherman passed through Meridian and Jackson, Mississippi, in February 1864.) Second by Sutpen, who rails against Sherman as well as Lincoln when he gets drunk: "Shoot them down like the dogs they are" (540).

"Miss Judith" is the only daughter of Thomas Sutpen (541). She lives alone in the big house on the plantation during much of the Civil War, after the deaths of her mother and brother and while her father is away fighting. After the war, she remains with her father, helping Wash Jones put him to bed when he gets drunk and helping Wash's fifteen-year-old granddaughter Milly sew a dress for the wedding that, although it never happens, would have made Milly her step-mother.