Sartoris Plantation Garden (Location Key)

The garden at the Sartoris plantation is associated with the ladies in the family. The "queen" of the story "There Was a Queen" is Colonel Sartoris' sister, Jenny Du Pre, who brought flower "cuttings" with her when she came to Sartoris from Carolina sixty years earlier and planted them in Mississippi, where they or more probably their descendants continue to bloom (728). She and the old family servant Simon Strothers, and Simon's grandson Isom, are described working together in the garden - though under Jenny's strict supervision - in several passages in Faulkner's first Yoknapatawpha fiction, Flags in the Dust. Over a decade older in "There Was a Queen," and confined to a wheelchair, she can only look at the garden from her upstairs window, which is how she spends most of the story and where she dies at the end. The other woman associated with the gardens at Sartoris is Rosa Millard, "My Grandmother Millard" in the title of a story narrated by Bayard Sartoris. This story, like the Unvanquished stories earlier, focuses on how Granny runs the plantation while her son-in-law Colonel John is away fighting in the Civil War. It mentions the "flower beds" in front of the house (674), but the garden behind the house where Lucius works is probably a kitchen garden, growing herbs and vegetables (669). Granny sounds a lot like Jenny speaking to Simon when she speaks to Lucius, though he is a slave instead of a servant.