Nancy

Character Analysis

Poor Nancy! She's a tragic figure in this tale, doomed from the get-go, or at least that's what she's decided. And, dang, this woman has all sorts of things stacked against her. Let's chronicle what we know about Nancy-pants.

We know she's a prostitute and that a white man—possibly Mr. Stovall—has impregnated her. We know that her husband Jesus is not at all happy about her pregnancy, and in fact has pretty much threatened to attack the man responsible and cut off his penis. Yowch. We know that Nancy is drinking too much alcohol and sleeping in, presumably to recover from staying up in the night with customers.

She's stuck with little to no power, being a black woman in the Southern town of Jefferson at about the start of the twentieth century. In short, she's got plenty of problems to be worried about.

Her troubles bring out three qualities: despair, guilt, and madness.

Her lack of power pretty much drives her to complete despair. After Mr. Stovall (one of her johns) attacks her rather than pay her, she attempts suicide in jail. The best she could hope for was to publicly taunt him for his lack of payment: "When you going to pay me, white man? It's been three times now since you paid me a cent" (1.12). But her taunts don't stop him from kicking her teeth out. No wonder she's so despairing.

The troubled woman turns on herself with guilt. "I hellborn, child," (2.28) she tells the young Jason. She doesn't recognize her feelings as guilt, but instead identifies her plight as the logical result of being a black woman.

"I ain't nothing but a n*****," Nancy said. "It ain't none of my fault." (1.29)

Her forthcoming death at the hands of Jesus, she imagines, is something inevitable:

"I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain't no more than mine." (5.17)

In other words, the fact that she is a black woman makes her feel she is permanently at fault, like someone from hell.

All this guilt and despair finally turns into what more or less amounts to madness. In the first place, although there is some evidence that Jesus is after her (according to Mr. Jason, a black man gave her word that Jesus was back in town), the idea mostly seems to be something haunting Nancy's imagination like a delusion.

There are physical manifestations of her mad behavior, too. In her cabin with the kids, Nancy leaves her hand "on the lamp, against the light," (4.11) as if pain doesn't affect her. She does the same thing with the fire she builds up.

"Look at Nancy putting her hands in the fire," Caddy said. "What's the matter with you, Nancy?" (4.20)

Finally, she believes she's seen a sign telling her Jesus is waiting in the ditch for her. All in all, Nancy serves as one giant contrast to Quentin's family. While his family might be rather dysfunctional, compared to Nancy they've got it made. Their biggest problems after abandoning Nancy is finding someone else to do their laundry and dealing with children taunting one another. Ultimately, Nancy is this story's tragic figure.