Cousin Melisandre

The young woman whom Bayard calls "Cousin Melisandre" is a upper class refugee: she leaves Memphis after it is captured by the Union forces to spend the War at the Sartoris plantation in northeast Mississippi. She seems related to Bayard on his mother's (Millard) side, but the only information the story provides about her family is General Forrest's reference to "that uncle or whoever it is that calls himself her guardian" (694). In the larger Yoknapatawpha canon she is significant as the ancestor of the woman whom Gavin Stevens marries, but in this story her role is mainly to provide Faulkner with a way to satirize the various affectations of the stereotypical heroine of other writers' Civil War romances.