The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Although "Elly" begins and ends on the road between Jefferson and Mills City, the only other drivers mentioned in the story are referred to, obliquely, at the very end, after the accident, when Elly thinks, "They won't even stop to see if I am hurt" (224). Their presence is indicated only by the "snore of an engine, the long hissing of tires in gravel" that she hears on the road above her (223).

Elly stays in her cousin's room during her visit to her uncle and aunt in Mills City, which offers a glimpse into her cousin's life. The cousin herself does not appear, but her bedroom is filled with "the frivolous impedimenta of a young girl" (217).

Elly's aunt is the wife of Elly's uncle, who is Ailanthia's son. She lives with her husband and daughter in Mills City.

Elly invents this "party" of people she will be visiting in order to explain her absence to Philip - and her need for his silent cooperation. She says that the group she'll be with is comprised of "people you don't know and that I don't expect to see again before I am married" (215).

The sewing women make the trousseau for Elly's wedding, coming to her house daily after the engagement is announced. Their race is not specified, which typically means 'white' in Faulkner's fiction, but at the same time domestic workers in the fiction are typically 'black,' so we have chosen to call these women's race unknown.

Elly's uncle, Ailanthia's son, lives in Mills City with his wife and daughter.

Philip is "a grave, sober young man of impeccable character and habits" who courts Elly with clock-like regularity (213). As a boy from Jefferson whom she has known "from childhood," Philip is the epitome of a suitable husband for Elly (213). His draw as a suitor is indicated in the same breath as his current occupation: "an assistant cashier in the bank, who they said would be president of it some day" (213).

According to the friend in "Elly," this unnamed man was killed by Paul's uncle after he had suggested that the uncle was part black - or as the friend puts it, in language that reminds us that in the racist world of the story, such a 'suggestion' is actually an accusation, that the uncle had "nigger blood" (209). The friend says she "just heard" this story (209). Elly calls it a lie. So it's possible neither the incident nor the uncle ever existed.

According to a story that Elly's friend "just heard," Paul de Montigny has an uncle who "killed a man once that accused him of having nigger blood" (209). In the friend's mind, this story 'proves' that Paul himself is black, but while believing in 'black blood' as a kind of curse tells us something about the friend and the culture she grew up in, "Elly" does not allow us to say whether Paul even has an uncle, much less whether any of the friend's other assumptions and implications are true.

Elly's unnamed friend entertains Paul de Montigny in her home, but is quick to judge Elly for the latter's interest in him. Elly's friend smokes, furtively, in her home, presumably hoping to escape detection by her parents. But if she too is rebellious, it is within very fixed limits. When Elly defends her behavior with Paul by reminding this girl that "you invited him into your house," she replies "I wasn't hid in the cloak closet, kissing him, though" (210). And despite entertaining Paul, she takes the signs of his mixed racial identity as proof of Elly's "queer taste" (209).