StrothersInFD

Four generations of the Strothers family appear or are mentioned in this first Yoknapatawpha fiction, though there should be five: Simon is identified as Joby's grandson, but the novel never mentions Simon's parents - which is why that generation is represented in absentia on the genealogical chart. The other genealogical mystery involves Elnora. When she appears in the novel's first chapter, the narrator describes her as "a tall mulatto woman" (9), a phrase that explicitly presumes that one of her parents is white. In Faulkner's world, it is unthinkable that her mother would have been the white parent. But while the novel mentions Euphrony, Simon's wife, it does not say if she is Elnora's mother, or give any hint that she had a sexual relationship with a white man. (Elnora will be given a white father in the later short story, "There Was a Queen," but in that text there is no mention at all of her mother.) There is also no mention of the man who is Isom's father. While the novel focuses more on the relationships between the members of this family and the white Sartorises than on their own family dynamic, Caspey's post-war attempt to defy the place he is assigned under Jim Crow segregation creates a good deal of inter-generational tension within the black family.