Submitted by chlester0@gmail.com on Tue, 2014-06-10 17:46
Unnamed, the daughter of the head of Reverend Hightower's seminary wants desperately to escape to the wider world and chooses the young Gail Hightower as her vehicle. She marries him, and schemes with him to effect his appointment to the pulpit in Jefferson. There, she tries to adjust to his neglect and inattention, but eventually begins looking for male companionship on secret trips to Memphis. They aren't secret enough to keep her from becoming a scandalous topic among the women in her husband's church.
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Tue, 2014-06-10 17:43
Though seldom traveled in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fiction, the road on which the Burden place sits is the main road from Jefferson to the (unnamed) town that lies "bout thirty miles" to the west (227). It is "not a gravelled road" - i.e. it is a dirt road - "though it looks to be fairly well used" (226). Joe Christmas walks through the woods alongside it when he travels back and forth between town and the Burden place. The "countryman" and his family are "coming to town in a wagon" on this road when they see the house on fire (90).
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Tue, 2014-06-10 17:34
To get to the house where Joanna Burden lives in Light in August you take the road that goes due west from Jefferson for two miles. According to the novel, it is "not a gravelled road" - i.e. it is a dirt road - "though it looks to be fairly well used" (226). On both the maps of Yoknapatawpha that Faulkner himself drew, this appears as one of the main 'spokes' that radiate out from the 'hub' at Jefferson, but Faulkner almost never does use it in his fictions. Joe Christmas walks through the woods alongside it when he travels back and forth between town and the Burden place.
