Tuesday 107: Vocab

Wistaria

A climbing plant bearing long, pendulous clusters of pale blueish flowers. Commonly spelled “wisteria” today.1

Roan

Having a chestnut, bay, or sorrel coat thickly sprinkled with white or gray. The characteristic coloring of a roan horse.

Faulkner’s familiarity and fondness for horses comes through in using the color as a point of reference, for example to describe a dead tooth in Go Down Moses (I think).

drover

One who drives cattle or sheep

Chickasaw

A member of a Native American people formerly inhabiting northeast Mississippi and northwest Alabama, now located in south-central Oklahoma. The Chickasaw were removed to Indian Territory in the 1830s.

Thomas Sutpen arrives in Yoknapatawpha County in 1833 and purchases the land that will become Sutpen’s Hundred from Chickawaw chief Ikkemotubbe.

Martinique

An island and overseas department of France in the Windward Islands of the West Indies. Inhabited first by Arawaks and later by Caribs, the island was visited by Columbus in 1502. It was colonized by French settlers after 1635. Fort-de-France is the capital.

Control of the island shifted between Britain and France throughout the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century. Slavery was ultimately abolished in Martinique in 1848, though it’s worth noting that it was abolished in the British empire in 1833, the year of Sutpen’s arrival. The enigmatic French architect Sutpen brings with him to Mississippi to design his mansion can be seen as a spectre of colonial inhumanity and decline.

Capstan

Nautical An apparatus used for hoisting, consisting of a vertical, manually or mechanically rotated cylinder around which the cable to be pulled runs.

chatelaine

1. The mistress of a castle or a large, fashionable household.
2. A clasp or chain worn at the waist for holding keys, a purse, a watch, or other small household items.

Faulkner in this particular instance uses the first definition.

banquette

1. A platform lining a trench or parapet wall on which soldiers may stand when firing.
2. also bankit (Southern Louisiana & East Texas) A raised sidewalk.
3. A long upholstered bench placed against or built into a wall.

The second definition is in use, though the first is worth noting. Faulkner’s descriptions of public spaces can be evocative and informative: men (it’s always men, white men) sit on dusty galleries, propping their legs on railings—scenes are often equally indolent and defensive. The scenes are timeless, or out of time, and there is often an undercurrent of danger.

purlieu

An outlying or neighboring area.

volteface

A reversal, as in policy. An about-face.

curl papers

Paper strips set into dampened hair to create curls.

portmanteau

pommel

The upper front part of a saddle; a saddlebow.

hostler

One who is employed to tend horses, especially at an inn.

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