Melissa Meek

Melissa Meek is the "county librarian, a mouse-sized and -colored woman who had never married," and also a former classmate of Caddy Compson who sees a photo of her in occupied France (333). Attempting to "save" Caddy enables Meek to transcend the characterization of her name, her profession, and her lifelong habits (335). She allows the library to become disorderly in her distraction, she bears "two feverish spots of determination in her ordinarily colorless cheeks" (333), she enters the feedstore where Jason IV works and where "only men ever entered," and she speaks to him, despite having refused to do so for many years. She also makes a determined trip to Memphis, despite being easily overwhelmed by crowds and "smaller than any other there" (337).