In Sanctuary two of the people in attendance at Red's funeral - "middle-aged women" (246) - are described "weeping quietly," but most seem mainly interested in the free alcohol Gene is providing and in getting the flowers off the crap table so that gambling can resume. They include men in both "dark suits" and "the light, bright shades of spring," and women, the "younger ones" wearing "bright colors" and the older ones "in sober gray and black and navy blue, and glittering with diamonds" (243).
On the train to Oxford in Sanctuary are "three middle-aged women" who cannot find seats, because of the "gay rudeness" of the college students who pushed into the car ahead of them (169).
Sanctuary refers to these women at a double remove: Horace is at the Sartoris place when he tells the story of Lee Goodwin at the Old Frenchman place telling him about the "Mexican girls" he met while serving as a sergeant in the U.S. cavalry (109).
When Horace goes downtown on his second day in Jefferson in Sanctuary, he renews his acquaintance with the men he meets around the courthouse: "merchants and professional men," most of whom "remembered him as a boy" (112). They are not otherwise characterized.
Sanctuary refers to men in the town square several times. In Chapter 17 they are seen "drifting back toward the square after supper" (134). In Chapter 19, looking through the window of Ruby's hotel room, Horace can see "men pitching dollars back and forth between holes in the bare earth beneath and locusts and water oaks" around the courthouse at the center of the square (161).
In Sanctuary the men lounging at the Taylor station who watch Temple as she gets off the train are "chewing slowly" (presumably tobacco) and wearing overalls (36).
Although Sanctuary refers to them at one point as "the garage men" (127), the "white men sitting in titled chairs along the oil-foul wall of the garage across the street" from the jail during the day are associated with only two activities: listening to the convicted murderer sing and chewing, presumably tobacco (115).
As Popeye and Temple drive down the Memphis street toward Miss Reba's in Sanctuary, they see "a fat man in a dirty apron with a toothpick in his mouth" inside the diner that they pass (142).
Sanctuary simply refers to the people eating dinner when Ruby comes in to use the phone as "Tull's family" (105). The story "Spotted Horses" (which was published a few months after Sanctuary) is a bit more forthcoming, listing "his wife and three daughters and Mrs. Tull's aunt." On that basis we identify the gender of the family as "female."
