Virginia in Absalom, Absalom! (Location)

The novel's account of the way the Sutpen family "fell" from the mountains in western Virginia (180) to "the slack lowlands about the mouth of the James River" (181) is deliberately vague. They travel in "a lop-sided two wheeled cart" pulled by "two spavined oxen" (181), and the journey takes long enough for one of the family's daughters to have one child and become pregnant again with another. Along the way, the children repeatedly "sit in the cart outside the doors of doggeries and taverns" while the father gets drunk; the "huge bull of a nigger" who throws Mr. Sutpen out of one of these places is "the first black man, slave," Thomas ever sees (182). One time they stay in "a cowshed where the sister's [first] baby is born" (183). As the land begins to "flatten out . . . with good roads and fields," the "doggeries and taverns" become "hamlets," the "hamlets" become "villages," the "villages" become "towns" (182).