Henry Sutpen

Henry Ellen Coldfield Sutpen represents the conscience of the Ellen Coldfield Sutpen family—a young man of genuine moral sensitivity thrust into circumstances that demand impossible choices. Unlike his father, Henry possesses a capacity for sympathy and shame; unlike his sister Judith Sutpen, he lacks the stoic acceptance that allows her to endure. Educated at the University of Mississippi and briefly at Oxford, Henry appears destined for a life of respectable Southern leadership. Yet his idolization of his father and his love for his sister place him at the center of the family's tragic machinery. The Civil War years see Henry attempting to remain loyal to his father while moving toward convictions that directly oppose his father's will, and his return to Ellen Coldfield Sutpen's Hundred marks the beginning of his withdrawal from the world. By the time Quentin Compson and Shreve McCannon attempt to reconstruct his history, Henry lives as a ghost, a man who has chosen isolation and obscurity over any form of ordinary life. His refusal to speak, his isolation in a decaying room at Ellen Coldfield Sutpen's Hundred, and the visible marks of his suffering suggest a man destroyed by knowledge and by the choices he was forced to make.