Chapter 7 Summary

Quentin and Shreve explore Sutpen's past and his early days at Sutpen's Hundred. Some of the detail emerges from conversations between Sutpen and Quentin's grandfather, which took place during the hunt for the escaped architect, when the house was still unfinished.

Sutpen grew up in the Virginian mountains, and then later, on the road with his family and alcoholic father. He was turned away from the door of a Plantation mansion by a Negro servant, and later left the country, determined to make his fortune. He went to work as an overseer on a plantation in the West Indies, where later he helped to put down a slave uprising. He married the owner's daughter, who he later discovered is half-colored. He paid this wife to renounce their marriage, and left her.

The pact between Sutpen and Mr. Coldfield is described as an illegal...