Character Keys

These are "the cops" in The Mansion who put out the burning cross in front of 'The Mansion,' i.e. the house where Linda Snopes Kohl lives with her father (252). The narrative says they were "outraged and seething of course, but helpless" - what they are outraged at, however, seems to be the fact that the house belongs to "THE banker" (252). (Faulkner usually identifies the police in Yoknapatawpha as sheriffs, deputies and marshals, but the term 'police' becomes more common in his later fictions; this use of the term 'cops' is even rarer.)

In "Dry September," these are the young women of Jefferson are seen by Minnie Cooper when she goes out alone in the afternoons, as they stroll downtown "with their delicate, silken heads and thin, awkward arms and conscious hips" (175). The narrative calls them "cousins" of Minnie Cooper, using quotation marks to indicate that they are not actual relatives (175).

This principal awards Wallstreet Panic Snopes his diploma in The Town.

The phrases "the women" (119) and "the ladies" (124) are used on several occasions in "A Rose for Emily" to describe the general opinion of all the women in town. They function as a particularly Southern kind of narrative chorus. Presumably, these phrases do not literally refer to every woman, or even every white woman (though they certainly do not include women of color), but rather the genteel white women whose own reputations are impeccable, and who can function as the self-appointed guardians of the town's good name.

In "Skirmish at Sartoris" and again in the chapter with that title in The Unvanquished, Bayard says that "all the ladies in Jefferson" (58) - in the second text this is revised to "all the women in Jefferson" (188) - travel out to the Sartoris plantation on several occasions: to confront Drusilla for her unlady-like behavior and to attend the wedding that will ceremonialize her return to their fold. The first time they appear, there are "fourteen of them," though that total includes Martha Habersham (63, 194). They all seem both curious and outraged by what they see.

in Requiem for a Nun there are several specific references to the "ladies" of a contemporary Jefferson. A hundred years after the town's naming, two ladies clubs argue over whether "to change the name back to Habersham" (7). (This group also appears in "A Name for the City," 202.) And it is only "a few irreconciliable old ladies" - in other words, ladies who have not reconciled themselves to the South's defeat in the Civil War - who refuse to forget the fact that during the war "a United States military force" burned the town Square (37).

This woman in The Town - identified by Charles' narrative only as "the first lady" (53) - reproves Maggie Mallison for calling on Eula Snopes.

These men appear in absentia in The Mansion as part of the explanation of how Otis Meadowfill ended up "choosing [Gavin] Stevens from among the other Jefferson lawyers" (367). As a county seat and the site of a federal courthouse, Jefferson presumably had quite a number of lawyers throughout its history.

In Flags in the Dust the man whom Pappy and John Henry tell about Young Bayard's accident is an anonymous "merchant" in town; the merchant, in turn, tells Old Bayard.

These merchants and sales clerks in Absalom! cater to Ellen Sutpen and her wealthy status during her "weekly ritual" of driving "store to store" in Jefferson by "fetching out" to her "the cloth and the meagre fripperies and baubles" for sale in their stores (57).

In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Gavin Stevens calls at the various offices and stores "about the square" and solicits funds to help pay the costs of bringing Mollie's grandson's body back to Jefferson and giving him a small funeral from "merchant and clerk, proprietor and employee, doctor and dentist and lawyer" (263) - this phrase in the novel adds "and barber" at the end (360). Some give him the "dollars and half dollars" he asks for, and some don't (265).

These men in The Town are described as Jefferson's "storekeepers and doctors and lawyers and mayors and such as that"; their "quiet and peaceful" suppers are disturbed by the sound of Manfred De Spain's car when he passes by the Mallison house (62).

In The Town, along with the Episcopalian minister Mr. Thorndyke, these three "pastors" - identified as "the Methodist, the Baptist, the Presbyterian" - call on Gavin Stevens at the request of their congregations to offer Gavin their assistance with Eula's memorial service. Gavin calls them all "Doctor" (359), but in the distribution of names Charles' narration clearly distinguishes between the Episcopalian and the other three; Charles calls Thorndyke as "our" pastor - i.e.

In "Miss Zilphia Gant," this "neighbor" is awakened when Zilphia "runs out of the house in her nightdress, screaming" (380). She - although the neighbor could be a man or a woman - summons the doctor.

In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, this is the unnamed "officer" whom Samuel Worsham Beauchamp attacks when he is caught breaking into Rouncewell's store (258, 354).

The tailor in The Hamlet who makes Jody Varner's distinctive clothing - a "glazed collarless white shirt" fastened with "a heaving gold collar-button" and a jacket of black broadcloth (7) - is himself not described.

In a strange anticipation of its own narrative, Light in August introduces this "acquaintance" who lives "in the town" and who tells the "stranger" who has noticed the sign in front of Hightower's house a very abbreviated version of the story of Reverend Hightower, his wife, and his twenty-five years in Jefferson (59-60). Two pages later the part of the stranger new to Jefferson will be played by Byron Bunch and the same story will be told to him in greater detail by "them," a collective town-as-narrator (60-73).

This entry supplements the "Unnamed Jefferson Townspeople" entry. It is necessary because, in addition to the major role that the white population as an aggregate plays in Light in August, the narrative identifies a number of behaviors specifically with the town's population of white males.

"Knight's Gambit" treats "the men from town" who travel out to the Harriss plantation at various times to watch the construction and, later, the polo matches, as a separate group from the county people who are parts of the same group of spectators. Among these men are "merchants and lawyers and deputy sheriffs," who can spectate "without even getting out of their cars” (163).

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In almost every case it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs.

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In each case it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs.

The various townspeople whom Pap and his son encounter during their brief visit to Jefferson in "Fool about a Horse" will probably remember the pair vividly. A group of pedestrians on the street has to "scatter" when the runaway mules come "swurging" into town (128), and another group in the alley behind the hardware store is treated to the sight of those same two mules apparently trying to hang themselves by their reins, like people "in one of these here suicide packs" (129). This second crowd is also described "all watching" as Pap and his son get ready to leave (129).

In "Vendee" and again in The Unvanquished Bayard distinguishes the "town people" who attend Granny's funeral from the "hill people" who are there as well. They include Mrs. Compson, who is one of the townspeople who arrange for the Episcopal preacher from Memphis to officiate at the funeral and who offer Bayard and Ringo a home until Colonel Sartoris returns from the fight. These people stand under umbrellas and get out of the way of Fortinbride and the hill people who bury Granny.

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In almost every instance it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs.

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In each case it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs. "A Rose for Emily" brings the townspeople as a collection onstage in the story's very first sentence, where the narrator refers to "our whole town" (119).

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In almost every instance it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs. Various anonymous groups bear witness to the events of The Mansion.

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In almost every instance it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs.

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In almost every instance it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs.

One of the narrative devices that Faulkner regularly deploys is using the larger population of Jefferson as a kind of chorus to provide commentary on the characters or events of a specific story. In each case it seems fair to say that the "townspeople" he uses this way are implicitly the white people, but it seems more accurate to create a separate "Character=Jefferson Townspeople" for each text in which the device occurs.

This is the "Jefferson woman shopping in Memphis" in Light in August who sees Mrs. Hightower going into a hotel when she is supposed to be visiting her family in Mississippi (64). When this woman returns home, she tells others what she saw.

The town jeweler in "A Rose for Emily" sells Emily Grierson a man's "toilet set in silver" - usually a comb and a brush, with perhaps a mirror and a clothes brush - engraved with the initials "H.B." (127).

The narrator of "Appendix Compson" refers to "the Jew owners of Chicago and New York sweatshops" who manufacture the "fine bright cheap intransigent clothes" that TP wears (343). The stereotypical assumptions about exploitative urban "Jews" betrays a streak of antisemitism that certainly recalls Jason Compson's ethnic prejudices in The Sound and the Fury but that is somewhat shocking in the post-World War Two era of the "Appendix."

This "Jicarilla squaw" from "Old Mexico" is the mother of "Byron Snopes's children" (379), the four sinister kids who appear at the end of The Town and then, as soon as Yoknapatawpha realizes how dangerous they are, are sent back into the west. She is mentioned, barely, in The Mansion, but nothing more can be said about her.

According to what Miss Reba says in Sanctuary, the men who have patronized her brothel during the 20 years she's been running it include "some of the biggest men in Memphis" - "bankers, lawyers, doctors" as well as "two police captains" (143). When Horace visits the brothel to talk with Temple, Reba tells him that she's done business with many lawyers, including "the biggest lawyer in Memphis" - and when she adds that this man weighed 280 pounds and "had his own special bed made and sent down here," "biggest" acquires an additional meaning (211).

The 'johns' who frequent Miss Reba's brothel in Memphis; in his narrative in The Mansion, Montgomery Ward Snopes calls them "customers" and "clients" (81).

These men in Light in August are the white customers of various unspecified brothels "in the (comparatively speaking) south" (225) who beat Christmas when, after "bedding" one of the white prostitutes, he identifies himself as a Negro (224).

In Sanctuary the judge who presides over Lee's trial is never individualized at all. He is not even called "judge" by the narrative, just "the Court" (270, 282, etc.). We identify him as "upper class" based on the status of the title "Judge" in Faulkner's other fiction.

In The Hamlet this is the Judge who presides over Labove's graduation ceremony from law school.

The narrator of "Smoke" refers briefly to "the presiding judge during court term" when describing how one can gain entry into Judge Dukinfield's office (14). It's not clear if this is a rotating or a permanent position.

Given the political realities of Mississippi circa 1930 it's safe to say that the jurors in Lee Goodwin's trial in Sanctuary are all white and male, but all the narrative ever says about them is that, after Temple's testimony brings the proceeding to an inexplicable end, they take "eight minutes" to convict him of a crime he did not commit (291).

The phrase "Grand Jury" suggests "something" "secret" and "of a hidden and unsleeping and omnipotent eye" to Percy Grimm's platoon of peace-keepers (456). In Light in August the "Grand Jury" that is empaneled to consider the charges against Joe Christmas does remain mysterious. The narrator, for example, says that "the Grand Jury . . .

In all three volumes of the Snopes trilogy the jury finds Mink guilty without much deliberation. In The Hamlet they are described as a "grave" and impassive "conclave of grown men" (368). (Only white males served on juries in Mississippi at the time of the story. By law, women were not allowed to serve on Mississippi juries until 1968. Negroes were not legally prohibited from being jurors, but until even later it was common practice to keep them off most juries.)

In The Town these jurors indict Mink Snopes for murdering Zack Houston.

In both the short story "By the People" and the novel The Mansion this is the unnamed Justice of the Peace in Frenchman's Bend whom Will Varner orders to make Clarence Snopes a constable. (The office of justice of the peace derives from traditional British legal practice, where justices belonged to the landed gentry. In Mississippi the office is an elected one.

In Absalom, Absalom! Thomas Sutpen is arraigned before a justice of the peace. (The office of justice of the peace derives from traditional British legal practice, where justices belonged to the landed gentry. In Mississippi the office is an elected one.

The first Justice who appears in "Barn Burning" is a "shabby, collarless, graying man in spectacles"; he presides over the Ab Snopes' trial in makeshift court in a general store (4). Described as having a "kindly" face, he discourages Harris from making young Sarty Snopes undergo questioning (4). While the Justice does not have enough evidence to convict Ab of burning Harris' barn, he tells him: "I can't find against you, Snopes, but I can give you advice. Leave this country and don't come back to it" (5).

In The Hamlet this is the justice of the peace in Jefferson who marries Flem Snopes and Eula Varner. (The office of justice of the peace derives from traditional British legal practice, where justices belonged to the landed gentry. In Mississippi the office is an elected one.

The Justice of the Peace in Whiteleaf who presides over the trials Armstid vs. Snopes and Tull vs. Snopes in The Hamlet is a "neat, small, plump old man resembling a tender caricature of all grandfathers who ever breathed" (357). With "neat, faintly curling white hair," he wears "steel-framed spectacles" overtop of "lens-distorted and irisless" eyes (357-8).

In one of the many scenes of pursuit in Light in August, Nathaniel and Juana spend several years searching for a "white preacher" (as opposed to a "priest") to marry them suggests how scarce the Protestant preachers were in the novel's vision of the frontier (247). It's not said where the "preacher" who does marry them in Kansas is from, but on the "Saturday night" before the Sunday wedding he arrives at the Burden home from somewhere else (250).