At the beginning of the last chapter, “The Odor of Verbena,” Bayard is approached by Professor Wilkins with the news that his father, Colonel Sartoris, has been killed. Immediately his plan is to take action against who was responsible for his fathers death. In the end, he decides not to take the life of the man who killed his own father which showcases Bayard’s moral development. It implicates major character growth because it is a completely different outcome than when his grandmother died previously. It could be argued that it was easier for Bayard to stand with courage and not kill a man in the case of his fathers death because his father was not as present as his grandmother was. Regardless, violence, specifically a violent death, seems to be passed generations down in the Bayards family. Other than the obvious fact that they are living during the Civil War, two parental figures of the protagonist die within violence. Bayard himself walks into a room with his fathers killer Redmond  and has shots fired at him. Yet, Bayard cheats death with the brave decision of walking in without intended violence towards Redmond. 

Moments before this occurs Bayard faces Drusilla. Although Bayard compares Drusilla to a “greek amphora priestess of a succinct and formal violence,” Faulkners mirroring connection to Greek tragedy also applies to the biblical phenomenom of Adam and Eve (174). Drusilla, similar to Eve, represents the “temptation” to sin or do wrong. She’s dressed in a beautiful “yellow ball gown with a sprig of verbena in her hair, holding the two loaded pistols” (174). The decievig temptation between Adam and Eve was the apple, the apple being tied to an unleashed evil, and the creeping temptation between Drusilla and Bayard are the pistols that she offers to him for him to commit the sin of killing (once again). The moment Bayard shares with his aunt Jenny emphasises the depth of seeking vengeance and foreshadows an “unleashed evil” if Bayard were to kill Redmond. Ultimately Bayard decides against such evil, healing the pain his fathers death caused him and blossoming into his most mature self–something that readers can enjoy watching in comparison to the beginning of the novel. The sprig of verbena in Drusellas hair symbolizes prayer, healing, and a protection against harm and evil. This sprig of verbena is much like the Garden of Eden with the similar naturalistic aspect, which holds promise and “paradise.” Bayard pins it onto his coat and with that carries the promise of healing with  him as he courageously makes his decision. Drusella was encouraging, or tempting, Bayard to take the pistols but instead his character decided to be “enveloped” in the scent of the verbena. The verbena seeps through his transgenerational trauma and grief: Bayard isthen  granted the paradise where we could conclude he finally grows into his morals and  maturity. Unlike Bayard, Adam falls for the temptations of the apple and unleashes an “evil” onto Earth whereas Bayard instead breaks the cycle of temptations/evil.  

With this take, one can question the representation Faulkner intended with Drusella’s character. Drusilla is represented as a strong woman that was not afraid of war, so could it be implied that strong women characters could be dangerous and/or decieving?  Or is he implying that women in some way have a savior complex? 

The Unvanquished gives an exploration of the vacuum that existed following the end of the civil war. The physical destruction, the destruction of the institution of slavery, and the destruction of southern idealism left all southerners – freed-slaves to the aristocrats – staring into the abyss. But through reconstruction of the Sartoris estate, reconstruction of Drusilla’s gender role, and seizing power of the ballot box, the characters of The Unvanquished live up to that namesake.

The loss of the war is resembled by the housing on the Satoris estate. After the main house is destroyed, Bayard, John, and Drusilla all spend time sleeping in the cabins that the former slaves stayed in. The leveling of housing situation represents the leveling of power situation immediately following confederate loss. Questions linger in the air like: “How will power be reorganized?” and “How will race relations change?” However, the initial leveling is soon changed by John Sartoris. At first he ends the black/white shared cabins: “After Granny died Ringo and Louvinia and I all slept in the cabin, but after Father came Ringo and Louvinia moved back to the other cabin with Joby and now father and I slept on Ringo’s and my pallet” (192). Even though they were still in a cabin, John saw to it that the blacks and whites would not sleep in the same quarters. The significance of a shared arrangement is not lost on the Colonel, and this is one of the many acts he undertakes to restore confederate social order. He continues that by rebuilding: “Father had rebuilt the house too, on the blackened spot, over the same cellar, where the other had burned, only bigger, much bigger.” (220) The reconstruction of the house represents the reconstruction of pre-war economic order, plantations built around large houses. Building back ‘bigger’ represents more than a return, an expansion.

The murder of Carpet-Baggers looking to elect a black Cassius Benbow to U.S. Marshal is another act of reconstruction. Ringo alerts Bayard to the changing times after Ringo had visited town to learn why John was banning them from visiting: “I ain’t a n—- no more. I done been abolished” (199). Ringo’s recognition is the reason why John needs to control the election; if blacks people are able to gain the rights that white’s were given in the south, then the social order of the confederacy would be destroyed. John later calls his actions ‘law and order’, suggesting that a free election that may enfranchise black people is chaos.

Another battle of reconstruction is fought on the body of Drusilla. Nick P mentioned in his post that Drusilla is one character who is able to imagine a new future in the wake of the war. Her future holds a different role for women where the goal of their life is to be wedded to a man and bear his children. She is stopped in her tracks by the power of confederate woman looking to reconstruct the gender roles of the war. The dress captures the battle over Drusilla’s identity: “She was already beaten. Aunt Louisa made her put on a dress that night” (201). The dress represents a lack of mobility, a type of labor, and a distance from battle. For Aunt Louisa the dress gives Drusilla a chance to be married, impregnated, and a role in the house. The possibility of Drusilla not being ‘womanly’ is so freighting that it brings her to tears. Perhaps Drusilla’s gender transgressions would represent another loss in the civil war, a loss of lifestyle and values that would be too great for Louisa to suffer. A dress goes on Drusilla to avoid this fate and bring back a way of life.

The acts of reconstruction in the second half of The Unvanquished let me investigate exactly what that title means. It also left me thinking “what is still not unvanquished from a pre-civil war past that structures our lives today?”

The last few sections of The Unvanquished include very interesting perspectives about gender in the South following the Civil War. 

According to Bayard’s narration, women in the South have a separate stake in the loss of the Confederacy. Through their actions during reconstruction, they are fighting to hold on to the traditional ideals of womanhood, chastity, and gentility.  Bayard seems to suggest that Southern women hold animosity, however subconscious, towards men for losing the war. The women themselves never surrendered, but they had to concede as well. Bayard says, “And so now Father’s troop and all the other men in Jefferson, and Aunt Louisa and Mrs Habersham and all the women in Jefferson were actually enemies for the reason that the men had given in and admitted that they belonged to the United States but the women had never surrendered.” This highlights the women’s lack of autonomy in the outcome of the war, and may demonstrate these same womens’ relentless desire to control what they can– Southern customs. As Drusilla (whom, for this analysis, I hold separate from the other women in the novel) “unsexes” herself and fights to keep her masculinity (her own way of holding on to Confederate values), the Southern ladies fight, in their way, for their hold on the past. Aunt Louisa thinks Drusilla’s actions to help rebuild the house, wear non-feminine clothing, and share sleeping quarters with men (namely John Sartoris) during the war, are defying “and outraging all Southern principles of purity that our husbands have died for” (193).  Louisa and her crew of ladies repeatedly write and visit Drusilla to convince her to change her ways. Later, they force her into marriage with John, in order to keep up appearances. Their persistent fight to force Drusilla into feminine compliance is their way of compensating for the deaths and grave losses of the war, and their way of tying themselves to the customs of the past, even as society as they know it is changing around them. In their minds, if women keep their roles, perhaps the South hasn’t really lost.  Ironically, Drusilla is also fighting for her version of the past, a past where she is still a confederate “man” in the military, fighting for her own freedom. Everyone is battling for their own conflicting versions of Southern standards. In the cases of Aunt Louisa and Drusilla, they both think they are doing what is most Southern and what would make the Confederacy most proud. 

Additionally, there is a group of men that nearly mirrors Louisa’s crew of ladies, fighting to hold on to their concept of Southern order. For the white men, who may not be accustomed to losing, their grasp on seemingly fleeting Southern civility lies in fair fights, dueling, revenge, and keeping black people out of leadership roles. John Sartoris and George Wyatt work together to make sure the election does not favor a black man, Cassius Q. Benbow. Bayard narrates, “Wyatt made a pack of the ballots and wrote them against his saddle and as fast as he would write them the men would take them and drop them into the box[.] It didn’t take long. ‘You needn’t bother to count them,’ George said. ‘They all voted No.’” (210).  As the group of men “holler” in celebration, they are compared to Yankees (the winners of the War). At this moment, in the new “war” of reconstruction, they are winning.  They do everything in their power to prevent the South from changing. Additionally, the men seem to be persistent in upholding another Southern standard, fighting fair and getting revenge. For example, after John’s death, a group of men including Wyatt show up to support Bayard, assuming he would be on a quest for vengeance. As Bayard arrives home after hearing the news of his father’s death, he says, “Then I saw the horses, the faint shine of leather and buckle-glints on the black silhouettes and then the men too– Wyatt and others of Father’s old troop– and I had forgot that they would be there.” They even offer to take on Redmond themselves. He declines, and it’s Bayard who takes on the task of approaching Redmond.  However, he finally defies this southern tradition– where in theory men could continue a nonstop rippling effect of killing a family member for a family member–  when he refuses to avenge his father by killing Redmond. 

In the first few chapters of The Unvanquished we see the son of a confederate colonel, Bayard Sartoris, slowly emerge as his own man as he come to recognize the complexities of war, race, and Southern society. Bayard’s development throughout the story is a classic scenario you see often in other Bildungsromans, yet what makes his development interesting is the ironic  circumstances that surrounds his growth.

In the chapter Ambuscade, Bayard is playing with his negro companion Ringo on the Sartoris plantation. These two frequently play mock battles reenacting Confederate and Union battles in the war. To them, the Civil War is something off in the distance, it’s just a game. Yet with the fall of Vicksburg to the Union, southern defeat in the Civil War seems inevitable and Bayard’ way of life will fundamentally be changed. This scene is ultimately highlighted when the slave Loosh notices the map of Vicksburg the boys drew in the dirt and laughs. But Loosh just stood there laughing, looking down at Vicksburg. Then he stooped, and with his hand he slept the chips flat. “There’s your Vicksburg” (pg 3).

In final pages of the chapter Retreat, the Sartoris plantation is burned down by Yankee soldiers and the silver the family has tried to keep hidden is stolen by Loosh. Unlike the childish adventure Bayard and Ringo had after shooting a horse in the previous chapter, Bayard loses his home and possessions which has been in his family for generations. When Granny adamantly confronts Loosh on his betrayal he retorts claiming he’s free. “Let God ax John Sartoris who the man name that give me to him. Let that man that buried me in the black dark ax that of the man what dug me free” (pg 35). Loosh is advocating the reason for his betrayal on account of his desire to be free yet Granny a product of her environment can’t recognize that sentiment.This strange juxtaposition in morality that Bayard encounters in this chapter informs the kind of circumstances he’ll encounter in this Post war South.

In Riposte in Tertio, Granny has started a scam where she petitions Union soldiers to give her mules and then sells them back to the clueless Yankee soldiers. While what Granny is doing is ultimately shady, the money she makes through this scam helps the community. An ex-confederate soldier brutally kills Granny and Bayard learns a cruel lesson in his path towards adulthood. Granny’s death is the loss of innocence moment that changes Bayard. Before,  the war and the circumstances surrounding it were a game he was too young to understand. Granny’s death and his subsequent need to avenge her turns Bayard from a young boy playing in the dirt into a man.

As Bayard sets off with Uncle Buck and Ringo to catch Ab Snopes and Grumby in “Vendée,” Faulkner expertly shifts and distorts reality around them. This makes sense to the narrative: the group is not only grieving, but also going without proper food and sleep, so cloudiness in their accounts is only logical. Faulkner expertly clouds reality in this section in part through uncertainty surrounding numbers – a concrete measurement easily distorted in dreams and lost to memory.

The distortions in the group’s perceptions first jumped out to me when Ringo enters what he thinks is an empty house, but winds up being met with “either three or thirteen men looking right at him” (165). It makes sense to be unsure if there are three or four men, or four or five men, but a crowd of three men looks very different from a crowd of thirteen men. Moreover, he doesn’t say that the number of men is somewhere between three and thirteen – he says it is either three or thirteen. This points to Ringo’s panic in the moment, since he notes that he initially thought the men were shooting at him for intruding. In Ringo’s shoes – sleep-deprived and constantly looking out for attackers – perhaps a crowd of three and a crowd of thirteen are indeed indistinguishable. Whether it’s a big crowd or a small crowd going after him, 

The uncertainty surrounding numbers persists throughout this section. The group hears “three or maybe four shots” (171) right before they find Ab Snopes. Bayard later describes the physical altercation with Ab Snopes: “Then we were both down in the mud: and then I couldn’t see him and I couldn’t seem to find him anymore, not even with the hollering: and then I was fighting three or four for a long time before Uncle Buck and Ringo held me and then I could see him again, lying on the ground with his arms over his face” (174). The confusion is palpable, with Bayard and Ab Snopes rolling in the mud, unable to see each other. What sticks out to me is the fact that Bayard is fighting “three or four.” He is clearly fighting Ab Snopes, and Uncle Buck and Ringo are holding him back from killing the helpless, whining man – who is the potential fourth person Bayard is fighting? Could his conscience be trying feebly to hold him back from attacking? Or is it the moral legacy of Granny, who surely would not support such actions?

During the confrontation with Grumby, the numbers are much clearer. The group is definitively met with three men (178), not three or four, or three or thirteen. Grumby then shoots his pistol three times at his former allies, leaving Bayard certain that he has two shots left (181). This certainty arguably saves the boys’ lives, as they know their enemy is lying to them when he tries to coax them out of hiding by saying he’s out of bullets. This confrontation is also morally clearer than the fight with Ab Snopes. Grumby is fighting back viciously, and his former allies ensure a fair fight by leaving him with a pistol. Ab Snopes, on the other hand, merely lays down and yells that he is outnumbered. No invisible extra fighter holds Bayard back when he shoots Grumby. 

Though perceptions and reality are absolutely distorted during the fight with Grumby – instead of telling us he shoots Grumby, for instance, Bayard describes in a passive voice his arm coming up and shooting (183) – the numbers are concrete, as they are throughout the following sections. The numerical uncertainty in “Vendée” points to the cloudy state of mind that comes with vengeance-seeking, and in the case of the fight with Ab Snopes, it hints at the moral complications of such actions. The numbers are also clear again in “Skirmish at Sartoris” and “An Odor of Verbena,” further correlating the mixed-up numbers with the intricate cloudiness that complicates the hegemony of vengeance in this section.

In “An Odor of Verbena,” when Professor Wilkins bursts into Bayard’s room, Bayard, now twenty-four, already knows the message being delivered: his father is dead. This sets in motion a series or realizations and “concomitant flashes” in Bayard’s mind as he prepares himself and rides home (214). It is in one of these moments that Bayard acknowledges that he is now The Sartoris. This is not as simple as being the man of the house, as it is often flippantly said, because for Bayard, this means taking on the role of the mythologized.

Even in name, The Sartoris sounds like a mythological figure, something from stories told to generations of children about valor, courage, and grandiosity. For much of the time we spend with Bayard in The Unvanquished his father is out of the picture, but this does not mean he is out of mind. From the first time we see John Sartoris, he’s grand in young Bayard’s mind as he rides his godlike horse, Jupiter (8). The father is mythic; he’s valorous, even if he is intolerant. In short, he’s principled. So, when Bayard learns his father’s dead, he understands “Who lives by the sword shall die by it,” a statement he knew well because his first thought when Professor Wilkins comes into his room, even before a word has been said, is “at last it has happened.” Even in death, his father is a sustained absence-presence: “I didn’t need to see him again because he was there, he would always be there” (252–253).

Bayard accepts the role of The Sartoris but does not relish it. He does, however, understand the weight of what is required of him: “At least this will be my chance to find out if I am what I think I am or if I just hope; if I am going to do what I have taught myself is right or if I am just going to wish I were” (215). Being The Sartoris requires more than just a name. Bayard knows Ringo will never see him this way, for many reasons, but perhaps most importantly because Ringo has already grown up so much and Bayard is slow to catch up. Perhaps Ringo is too close to Bayard to see him as anything but a colleague or companion. Myth requires distance. Ringo and Bayard are never far enough apart, in age or distance, for Ringo to see him this way.

The Sartoris is a masculine ideal, but Bayard has spent the war surrounded by women. His worldview is larger than the scope of battle. He looks up to the women in his life. In “Skirmish at Sartoris,” he posits that “maybe times are never strange to women: that it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of repeated follies of their menfolks” (194). He also understands that “the women had never surrendered” the war but the men (188). And yet, there’s a fate reserved for Southern women that is demonstrated in Drusilla which Bayard calls “the highest destiny of a Southern woman—to be the bride-widow of a lost cause” (191).

Were this story to continue, I think we would see The Sartoris continue to change from the brute masculine to a more balanced worldview. The myth would change. Wisdom and patience might overthrow intolerance and violence. Bayard tried his hand at brutal revenge in “Vendee” when he and Ringo nail Grumby to the cotton compress for killing Granny and again when they nail his severed hand to her grave (186). This is the way of the father, but Bayard, talking about Mrs. Wilkins after he learns of his father’s death, states that “she was a woman and so wiser than any man, else the men would not have gone on with the War for two years after they knew they were whipped” (215).

Masculinity is not a lost cause, it is a thing often possessed, hardly understood, and rarely practiced well; it is a thing to be constantly improved upon. It seems that even John Sartoris was on his way to changing his own masculine ideal as Drusilla shares with Bayard his father’s dream and to which Bayard considers that perhaps “his dream was not something which he possessed but something which he had bequeathed us which we could never forget, which would even assume the corporeal shape of him whenever any of us, black or white, closed our eyes” (253).

During our last class, I posited that perhaps Drusilla, for all her subversion of gendered expectations during the Civil War, can actually be read as one of Faulker’s characters most obedient to the confederate hegemony. After finishing The Unvanquished, I think we can see her hegemonic loyalty to the confederacy most clearly after the war, when, as Bayard puts it, “the men had given in and admitted that they belonged to the United States but the women had never surrendered” (188).  While in one regard, her marriage to John Sartoris signals the end of her fight to be a masculine confederate solider– Bayard refers to Aunt Louisa’s forcing the marriage as the event that “broke” Drusilla, “beat” her, and even John Sartoris agrees, “They have you beat, Drusilla,”– the union also signals Drusilla’s strengthened allegiance to the confederate hegemony that John Sartoris embodies (202-203). Engaged to Colonel Sartoris, Drusilla is ironically the most unquestionably tethered she has ever been to Sartoris’s troop of soldiers. We can see this in the action John Sartoris and Drusilla take in town on the day of their wedding. When they arrive in town, they murder the Burdens, steal the ballot box of the ongoing election, and John Sartoris appoints Drsullia as voting commissioner (206-207). When they ride back into town, Bayard describes: “It came back high and thin and ragged and  fierce, like when the Yankees used to hear it out of the smile and the galloping: ‘Yaaaaay, Drusilla!” they hollered. (210). This is the most patriotic glory, and perhaps the only moment of public recognition,  Drusilla receives in her masculine confederate efforts, and she receives it while wearing her wedding dress. 

While John Sartoris embodies the hegemonic confederate ideal– a man of honor, courage, and ceaseless dedication to fighting for the confederacy– Bayard Sartoris perhaps grows (up) to embody a new generation of southern white men post-war. In “Odor of Verbena,” we learn that as the South has acquiesced to the law of the United States after their Civil War defeat, Bayard, too has embraced the law by becoming a law student. This twenty-four-year-old version of Bayard demonstrates a willingness to forgo some of the violence that accompanies his inherited sense of confederate honor in fighting on behalf of the rebels.  He recalls the phrase “Who live shall the sword shall die by it,”  and when he arrives to confront Redmond, who took his father’s life, he chooses not to avenge his father with murder (214, 217). Bayard seems to credit this sentiment of relinquishing the proverbial sword to women in general, noting that before he left to confront Remond, Mrs Wilkins did not offer him a horse and pistol as Mr Wilkins did, “because she was a woman and so wiser than any man, else the men would not have gone on with the War for two after they  knew they were whipped” (215). Drusilla stands in stark contrast to this portrait of women as wiser than war. Perhaps, as Bayard has gained an appreciation for some feminine notion of peace, or the sanctity of individual human life, Drusilla has gained a masculine lust for glory. Or perhaps she married the colonel and inherited the ethos his son did not. We can see this when Bayard questions his father’s history of confederate violence, asking Drusilla, “But how can they [they being the whole country, according to Drusilla, who still holds to the belief that John Sartoris was fighting for some greater good of all poeple] get any good from what he wants to do for them if they are–after he has–”, and she interrupts: “Killed some of them? I suppose you include those two carpet baggers he had to kill to hold that first election, don’t you?” Bayard replies, “They were men. Human beings.” Drusilla doubles-down, “They were northerners, foreigners who had no business here. They were pirates” (223). Unlike Bayard, who has moved on to law school, considering new and conflicting ideas of honor, or righteousness, Drusilla shares in John Sartoris’s dream of eternal confederate glory. Perhaps we can read her hysterics in her final scene, her laughing uncontrollably in horror over the murder of her late husband, as representative of the monomaniacality of the confederate rebels who persisted to follow the confederate dream, even after the war was over. 

P.S.

Much comparison has been made between the role of women and the role of soldiers in the mechanics of a nation. Contemplating Drusilla reminded me of a passage in Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). In discussing the distinction between manners and morals, Mary Wollstonecraft compares women to soldiers: she writes that both women and male soldiers alike are “taught to please,” resulting in their acquiring “manners before morals,” or the appearance of prescribed morals without the ability to reason in actual morality (Wollstonecraft, 34). Of course, I am unsure if Faulker read Wollstonecraft, or made much of her work, but nonetheless her writing on women and soldiers seemed to me especially pertinent to the question of Drusilla and subversion. Wollstonecraft writes that both women and soldiers have been “thrown out of a useful station by the unnatural distinctions established in civilized life,” likening the military hierarchy to the domestic hierarchy that subjugates women to the authority of the men of the home (Wollstonecraft, 34). Here, Wollstonecraft’s likening of the social hierarchies of militaries to social hierarchies of homes suggests an important underlying assumption in her argument: usefulness to the nation requires agency. While some might consider soldiers inherently “useful” members of a nation, – as indeed Faulker’s Drusilla seems to– Wollstonecraft deems their station useless on very grounds that define their role (and women’s) in society: blind obedience. This dismissal of the usefulness of obedience in society can perhaps be considered a feminist revision of nationalism in which  “serving the country” relies not on rigid social order, but rather on the agency allowed by social mobility. With this in mind, Bayard’s intellectual engagement in questioning his father’s past is far more subversive to the confederate hegemony than Drusilla’s taking up soldier’s arms ever was. We can perhaps even read Drusilla’s masculinization, both despite and because of her rejection of the feminine role as bride and caretaker, as the ultimate conformity to confederate ideals. Just as she was expected to blindly subjugate herself to the authority of a husband, she does so, revering the authority of John Sartoris in the home and battlefield, even after his death. If a bride is supposed to be like a soldier to her husband, Drusilla has gone above and beyond in her fulfillment of the confederate ideal of a woman.

As Drusilla Hawk takes over as The Unvanquished’s central woman character, we become privy to a more disruptive kind of gender transgression that shatters Bayard’s definitions of the masculine and the feminine. While Granny’s body is invisible, Bayard provides several details on Drusilla’s body, including her athleticism and masculine presentation. In “Skirmish at Sartoris,” we are told that Drusilla “had deliberately tried to unsex herself” in that she is wearing men’s clothes and fighting the Yankees in John Sartoris’ brigade (189). Drusilla’s “unsexed” body is under constant scrutiny. She ruptures the gender binary by becoming a multiple: both man and woman. Drusilla’s cross-dressing is a direct challenge to ladyhood. When dress standards are transgressed, a challenge to socio-economic strata is issued. Style of dress is a highly regulated semiotic system. It thus becomes a highly contested topic in the novel because it flies in the face of how Southern social order is conducted. By wearing overalls and pants and doing manual labor, Drusilla has rejected the “highest destiny of a Southern woman—to be the bride-widow of a lost cause” and a “shame to her father’s memory” (191). Most shocking to Aunt Louisa and the ladies of the town is that when Drusilla was in the army, she wore “the garments not alone of a man but of a common private soldier” (191). Not only has Drusilla transgressed gender, but she has also transgressed class. Aunt Louisa probably would have at least a sliver felt better if Drusilla had worn a uniform befitting her social status. Drusilla’s subversion is aimed at class and gender, but in her immense privilege, she cannot see how her actions continue to uplift a white supremacist state.

Aunt Louisa’s final straw is when she learns that Drusilla is living with John Sartoris on their plantation. Immediately, Aunt Louisa assumes Drusilla is pregnant out of wedlock. When confronted with Aunt Louisa’s accusations, Drusilla “not only showed neither shame nor remorse but actually pretended she did not even know” what Aunt Louisa was talking about (191). Aunt Louisa accuses her daughter of “flouting and outraging all Southern principles of purity and womanhood that our husbands died for” (193). Drusilla’s body has become an object of contention for nearly all the townswomen and the Sartorises. She has been accused of violating the sacred realm of Confederate Womanhood. Aunt Louisa accuses Drusilla of willfully abandoning the cause for which her father died. Drusilla has defied the role ascribed to her at birth of the virtuous Southern Belle, and by refusing to adhere to it, she has entered an unknown, in-between realm.

Drusilla’s occupation of this in-between realm is short-lived. While Drusilla may have been able to rupture Aunt Louisa’s notions of propriety, she cannot hold up under the pressure of “Southern gentleman” and planter John Sartoris. Aunt Louisa arrives at Hawkhurst “in mourning, even to the crepe bow on her umbrella handle, that hadn’t worn mourning when we were at Hawkhurst two years ago though Uncle Dennison was just as dead then as he was now,” with trunks of Drusilla’s dresses to take back her daughter’s class and gender, demanding that John marry her (200). Despite Aunt Louisa’s shocking behavior, John Sartoris decides to reinstate the violated hierarchies and tells Drusilla, “They have beat you” (203).

At the end of “Skirmish at Sartoris,” however, Drusilla, now dressed in the symbolically significant bridal gown and veil, demonstrates that the construction of her as a Southern Belle is tenuous at best. She reasserts allegiance to toxically masculine spheres of violence and political exclusion by helping John kill the Burdens, who were trying to help formerly enslaved people vote. On returning to Sartoris, Aunt Louisa asks, “so you are not married,” to which Drusilla replies, “I forgot,” (208). Again, we see that while Drusilla may rebel against the rules of ladyhood, she completely aligns herself with the white supremacist, anti-Reconstruction politics that aim to keep the white, wealthy, male landowner in power.

In “An Odor of Verbena,” the instability of Drusilla’s return to Confederate Womanhood is rendered all the more precarious with a troubling account of the dangers of her transgressions. Drusilla’s forced position as John Sartoris’ wife and the lady of the plantation complicates her adoption of masculine values. She now lives in a plantation house “bigger” than the last. She wears skirts and appears separated from the masculine presentations she wishes to embody. Thrown from the masculine realm, Drusilla attempts to employ her notions of classical femininity to manipulate the attraction Bayard feels for her to get him to take revenge on John’s killer. In essence, she wants Bayard to become a surrogate killer for her, so she may vicariously enjoy the infliction of violence that her assigned gender placement does not allow. While the two of them are alone, Drusilla “was quite near…as she stood holding out to me, one in either hand, the two dueling pistols” then she says to Bayard: “Take them…Oh, you will thank me, you will remember me who put into your hands what they say is an attribute only of God’s, who took what belongs to heaven and gave it to you. Do you feel them? The long true barrels true as justice, the triggers…slender and invincible and fatal as the shape of love” (237). 

The latter half of The Unvanquished highlights the grueling aftermath that Bayard endures after Granny’s death. His attitude towards the practice of killing slowly shifts as he deciphers how to avenge his grandmother’s legacy. In the first half of the novel, Bayard narrates childhood stories from a point of innocence, in which he was somewhat shielded from the violence that was occurring in the outside world. However, as we continue to follow his journey up until the novel’s conclusion, Bayard begins to understand the lengths that one might reach in order to avenge the life of a loved one.

“Vendée” opens with Bayard emotionally looking back on Granny’s funeral, in which he begins to describe the burial process. Throughout the retelling of this somber memory, he is observant of the natural environment, as he takes notice to “the quiet rain splashing on the yellow boards until they quit looking like boards and began to look like water with thin sunlight reflected in it, sinking away into the ground.” (157). Bayard shapes this memory into a moment of closure at this point in his life. He paints his grandmother’s burial as a peaceful process as opposed to one that is filled with imminent sadness. Although devastated by Granny’s death, he seems hopeful to put the past behind him in order to look towards the future. The comparison of the rain hitting the boards on the casket to sunlight acts as Granny lighting the way for Bayard as he grows up. She understood the potential he possessed in terms of the person that he wanted to become. There is also a bit of lightheartedness towards the end of the funeral service, in which Brother Fortinbride asks the procession “’And what do you reckon Rosa Millard would say about you all standing around here, keeping old folks and children out here in the rain?’” (158). Here, this acted as a “If Granny were here right now, what would she say?” moment. Brother Fortinbride wanted everyone at the funeral to walk away remembering Granny as a fierce, fearless woman who spoke her mind at any chance she could. Those final words of the service symbolize how her legacy would leave a mark not only on the Sartoris family, but on anyone else who crossed paths with her.

Uncle Buck interrupts Bayard’s period of remembrance and his beginnings of gaining closure after the funeral. He asks him and Ringo, “’What you boys going to do now?’” in which Bayard looks back down at Granny’s grave in order to formulate a response (158). It is clear that Uncle Buck’s question emotionally triggered Bayard, which resulted in this short period of silence after the question was asked. Faulkner frames this obvious question to us as readers because we can infer what Bayard’s next steps are going to be right away. Although we do not see Bayard explicitly say that his uncle’s question sparked a rollercoaster of emotions inside him, it is perfectly evident that the simplicity of the question provided just the right amount of emotion to tip Bayard over the edge. His response, “’I want to borrow a pistol’” indicates the beginnings of his plans to avenge Granny, in which these plans include violent repercussions (159). Bayard becomes more mature here, as he takes the reins on this fight for justice. He establishes himself as a leader in the situation, and he was willing to do whatever it took in order to find Grumby and kill him once and for all.

Grumby’s murder scene at the end of the fifth chapter was very open-ended, but it also showcases how Bayard viewed the process of killing as a one and done process. Faulkner builds tension in the moments leading to Bayard killing Grumby, but then this tension fizzles out once Grumby is actually killed. The third section of the chapter ends with “Or maybe that made no difference either, because now my arm had come up and now I could see Grumby’s back (he didn’t scream, he never made a sound) and the pistol both at the same time and the pistol was level and steady as a rock.” (183). It feels like Bayard doesn’t feel triumphant as a result of killing Grumby to avenge his grandmother’s death. He had a particular goal in mind once his grandmother had passed away, and now that he had achieved that goal, there was not much else to this aspect of his journey afterward. What somewhat conflicts this idea is when Bayard, as a final act of dominance, pins Grumby’s body parts to Granny’s grave (184). Perhaps a part of him wanted to prove to Granny, who is now peacefully at rest, that he was able to defend her honor? Or, was there supposed to be an underlying brutal tone in this scene, as we have not seen Bayard engage in such violent acts before this point? Overall, as our main character and primary narrator of this story, it was fascinating to witness Bayard undergo such a shift, making him complex to analyze from a psychological and emotional perspective.