Bundrens' Farm (Location Key)

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 - i.e. they own the farm and its fields - but like many of the other small cotton farmers in their part of Yoknapatawpha it's clear that they have to struggle for subsistence. Physically, the Bundren farm sits below the bluff that the house is built on top of. It features a cotton field with a path that "runs straight as a plumb-line" through the cotton rows toward the cottonhouse "of rough logs, from between which the chinking has fallen. Square, with a broken roof set at a single pitch, it leans in empty and shimmering dilapidation in the sunlight, a single broad window in two opposite walls giving onto the approach of the path" (4). On one side of the field are woods, and on the other, next to the path that leads up to the house, a road. The farm also features a barn, wagon shed, pasture, and spring, all located at the bottom of the bluff. We assume that the Mrs. Bundren who lives "up past Whiteleaf" in "Spotted Horses" is Addie - or in any case someone who lives on this farm too (174).