Unnamed People of Frenchman's Bend 4

Character Key Number: 
457
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Unnamed People of Frenchman's Bend 4
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Unnamed People of Frenchman's Bend 4
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

The rural and poor hamlet of Frenchman's Bend appears or is referred to in 18 different Yoknapatawpha fictions; this entry focuses on one of the texts that characterizes the people who live there as a group. "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard" refers to the small farmers and others who live in the neighborhood of the Old Frenchman place in several ways: they are the Frenchman's "nameless and unrecorded successors," his "shiftless and illiterate heirs at large" who have been pulling his huge house apart for firewood for generations (136); they are among the spectators who, after spending the day watching Armstid digging, can be seen talking about him "in halted wagons along the quiet roads and lanes" and "in the fields or at the cabin doors about the slow, laborious land" (137).