She is one of three daughters of Calvin Burden I and Evangeline in Light in August. Unlike their older brother Nathaniel, who is dark like their mother, all three daughters have blue eyes.
She is one of three daughters of Calvin Burden I and Evangeline in Light in August. "Vangie" is presumably a nickname for "Evangeline," which is her mother's name. Unlike their older brother Nathaniel, who is dark like their mother, all three daughters have blue eyes.
She is one of three daughters of Calvin Burden I and Evangeline in Light in August. "Beck" is presumably short for Rebecca. Unlike their older brother Nathaniel, who is dark like their mother, all three daughters have blue eyes.
The relatives of Joanna Burden who remain in New Hampshire in Light in August are named Burrington. Her nephew Nathaniel - he has the same name as her great-grandfather - offers a $1000 reward for her killer after he is informed about her murder.
In Light in August the first Nathaniel Burrington stands at the head of the ancestral line that reaches an end with Joanna Burden. He is a Unitarian minister in New England who fathers ten children, the youngest of whom is Calvin, who changes his last name from Burrington to Burden.
Joanna Burden's father in Light in August. He is the only son of Calvin Burden I and Evangeline. Like his father, he runs away from home as a teenager. In the far west he meets Juana, and they have a son, Calvin Burden II, born out of wedlock in 1854. With his father and son he moves to Jefferson in 1866, "to help with the freed negroes" (251).
A major character in Light in August, Joanna Burden is a middle-aged spinster who has lived in the "old colonial plantation house" (36) outside Jefferson since she was born, yet "she is still a stranger, a foreigner whose people moved in from the North during Reconstruction" (46). Nurturing and helpful to local Negroes, and a contributor to and supporter of many Negro schools and colleges across the South, she is regarded by the townspeople as a "Yankee, a lover of Negroes" (46).
In Light in August Evangeline Burden is the first wife of Calvin Burden I, and the mother of their four children. She is also the daughter of a St. Louis, Missouri, family of Huguenot descent, who came west "from Carolina" - the location so many of the leading white families in Yoknapatawpha migrate from (241).
Colonel Sartoris' killing of two Northerners during Reconstruction is told four times in the fictions. The first time, in Flags in the Dust, Will Falls refers to them as "them two cyarpet-baggers" (23). They are given names in Light in August, where the same event is retold from Joanna Burden's perspective. The younger of these men is her half-brother, Calvin Burden II; Joanna calls him "a boy who had never even cast his first vote" (249).
Colonel Sartoris' killing of two Northerners during Reconstruction is told four times in the fictions. The first time, in Flags in the Dust, Will Falls refers to them as "them two cyarpet-baggers" (23). They are given names in Light in August, where the same event is retold from Joanna Burden's perspective. The oldest of these men is her grandfather, Calvin Burden I; he lost one of his arms fighting against slavery as "a member of a troop of partisan guerilla horse" in 1861 (244).
