Virginia Sartoris Du Pre

The "Queen" of this story, Virginia Du Pre nee Sartoris is a force to be reckoned with for over ninety years. When Elnora talks about "Her," her tone of voice capitalizes the pronoun (732). "The last of the Carolina family" (728), whose father and husband were killed during the Civil War, in 1869 she made her own way across the defeated South carrying panes of colored glass and flower cuttings from the family's ancestral home like sacred relics. Living with her brother, Colonel John, in Mississippi she becomes the proud keeper of the family's history and the loving scourge of its menfolks. She grows a lush garden out of her salvaged cuttings. In this story she may also be administering the family's still extensive properties, though Faulkner never makes that role explicit. Though the failing of her body has put her in a wheelchair, her mind is as sharp and as acerbic as ever.