Wash Jones' Daughter|Melicent
Character Key Number:
106
Display Name:
Wash Jones' Daughter|Melicent
Sort Name:
Jones, Daughter of Wash|Melicent
Parent Character Key:
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?:
Yes
Biography:
The "daughter" of Wash Jones and the mother of Milly is not named either in the short story "Wash," were she is first mentioned (536), or in Absalom!, where she plays a somewhat more visible role, but she has her own entry as "MELICENT JONES" in the "Genealogy" at the end of the novel (308). In the novel itself, she lives with her father for some years in the "abandoned" fishing camp at Sutpen's (99). The daughter she gives birth to there is "fatherless" (139). Rosa tells Quentin that she "heard once" that this woman "died in a Memphis brothel" (139) - a "rumor" which the Genealogy repeats (308).