Submitted by padgettjb@breva... on Sun, 2017-09-24 17:02
In his accounting for Ratliff's presence at the hunting camp, the story's frame narrator mentions a "Mrs. de Spain," wife of the man who owns the camp (63). She does not appear in the story, and all the narrator says about her is that "doubtless [she] already owned" a sewing machine, unless she gave it to one of her daughters (63).
Submitted by padgettjb@breva... on Sun, 2017-09-24 16:57
Major de Spain is a wealthy landowner in Jefferson and the owner of a fishing and hunting camp near the Tallahatchie River in northern Yoknapatawpha County. Perhaps because he owns the camp, or perhaps because of his higher class status, De Spain is considered the leader of the group who gather for roughly two weeks in the fall of each year to hunt bear, deer, and other game. Like several other characters in this story, "Major de Spain" appears in a number of Faulkner novels and short stories, as a name for two different characters, a father and a son.
Submitted by padgettjb@breva... on Sun, 2017-09-24 16:49
Ratliff is a traveling sewing machine salesman who tells the story of Luke Provine's bout with hiccups and his own part in helping 'cure' them. A garrulous man of the people, Ratliff speaks in a folksy vernacular that stylistically sets him apart from the story's more formal frame narrator. He himself becomes a butt of the joke he tries to play on Provine when, unbeknownst to him, Ash appropriates his scheme for his own purposes - an ironic outcome that Ratliff accepts with good humor.
Submitted by padgettjb@breva... on Sun, 2017-09-24 16:41
"A Bear Hunt" opens with this unnamed narrator, whose role is essentially to frame the first-person vernacular tale told by Ratliff that will be begin on the fourth page of the text. He provides some necessary background information about the story's characters and settings, including Ratliff and Lucius Provine, and the Indian mound and settlement.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Sat, 2017-09-23 19:35
Well known for its marble and sculpture craftsmanship, Italy is where Gavin sends a photograph of Eula to have a medallion carved to fasten to her monument.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Sat, 2017-09-23 19:30
Only two characters visit Italy in person. Rome, the country's capital, is one of the European locations from which Mrs. Harriss sends her friends in Yoknapatawpha cards during her travels in "Knight's Gambit." In Flags in the Dust Horace Benbow visits Venice before returning to Jefferson after World War I.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Sat, 2017-09-23 19:22
Doctor Peabody's office is located above Christian's drugstore. (Since Digital Yoknapatawpha can't display Locations vertically, we've located in just north of the drugstore.)
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Sat, 2017-09-23 19:14
Relatively new to Jefferson, the local "ten cent store" is where shopping bags are given away to customers (242). (Also called "five-and-dime" or "nickel-and-dime" stores, these stores were distinguished for the variety of low-cost merchandise they stocked. The first such stores were opened in Pennsylvania by the Woolworth Brothers in the late 19th century. By the early 20th century they were common in the South.)
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Sat, 2017-09-23 17:35
New Market is apparently a hamlet in Yoknapatawpha County where Gavin Stevens goes to a "supervisor's meeting on some more of the drainage canal business" (268). "Some more" seems to connect with an earlier reference to the "squabble over a drainage tax suit" (181) in Wyott's Crossing, so we have located New Market near that other location. But It does not appear in any other fiction, so we have no clear evidence as to where Faulkner imagined it to be.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Sat, 2017-09-23 17:33
New Market is apparently a hamlet in Yoknapatawpha County. Gavin Stevens, a county official, goes there in The Town to attend a "supervisor's meeting on some more of the drainage canal business" (268). "Some more" seems to connect with an earlier reference to the "squabble over a drainage tax suit" (181) in Wyott's Crossing, so we have located New Market near that other location. But New Market does not appear in any other fiction, so we have no clear evidence as to where Faulkner imagined it to be.
