Lump Snopes' Mother

Described in The Hamlet as a "thin, eager, plain woman who had never had quite enough to eat," Lump's mother grew up in a large family plagued by "a constant succession of not even successful petty-mercantile bankruptcies" (218). Despite her desire to better herself through education and teaching, she married a "man under indictment" and gave birth to a son that she named after the Arthurian knight Launcelot as an act of "quenchless defiance" against the grim circumstances of her life. She died soon after.