Compson Place (Location Key)

Best known as decaying, haunted mansion from The Sound and the Fury, the Compson place began as a prosperous antebellum slave plantation on a square mile of land so near the settlement of Jefferson that the property is eventually incorporated into the town. The "Appendix" that Faulkner wrote sixteen years after the novel notes the plantation's "slavequarters and stables and kitchengardens," "formal lawns and promenades and pavilions," and a "columned porticoed house" designed by an architect and furnished from France (328). That "Appendix" sums up the longer story of its decline from this grandeur into a mid-20th century housing development consisting of "row after row of small crowded jerrybuilt individuallyowned demiurban bungalows" (331). In the Snopes trilogy it turns out that Flem is behind this last stage in the fall of the house (see The Town and The Mansion), but even by the late 19th century and the childhood of the Compson children the path of its decline is clear. On the inset map for the Compson place in The Sound and the Fury are 15 separate Locations, including one for the house; each of those Locations has its own entry in this index.