Herbert Head

Character Key Number: 
221
Display Name: 
Herbert Head
Sort Name: 
Head, Herbert
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

In The Sound and the Fury Herbert Head, whom Mrs. Compson calls "my Harvard boy" (93), is a banker from South Bend, Indiana. He and the already-pregnant Caddy meet in the fashionable resort of French Lick; in April 1910 they marry after Herbert promises Jason a job in the family bank, and tries to bribe Quentin to keep secret his expulsion from Harvard for cheating. The marriage does not last a year: when he discovers Caddy's pregnancy, Herbert disowns her and her child. He becomes Caddy's unnamed 'first' husband in the "Appendix Compson" that Faulkner wrote 17 years later, but the "extremely eligible young Indianian" described there is the same figure as the novel had described (332).