Judge Dukinfield

Submitted by sfr on Fri, 2019-08-02 14:37
Character Key Number: 
399
Display Name: 
Judge Dukinfield
Sort Name: 
Dukinfield
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

In "Smoke," the story where he makes his first appearance, Judge Dukinfield is "a widower of sixty and more, portly, white-headed, with an erect and dignified carriage which the Negroes called 'rear-backted'" (12). The judge has a daughter named Emma. During his seventeen years as a Chancellor, his official judgments have been guided by the belief "that justice is fifty per cent legal knowledge and fifty per cent unhaste and confidence in himself and in God" (12). (In Mississippi, Chancellor is another title for Judge in Chancery Court, the legal venue for settling disputes over wills, among other civil as opposed to criminal issues.) While working on a probate case in this story, he does get involved in a criminal trial - as the victim of a murder. He appears again, much less dramatically, in The Town and The Mansion, both times as part of Gavin Stevens' civil case against Manfred de Spain.

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