The Snopes Trilogy: A Full Character and Relationship Map
Spoilers: This guide discusses all three novels in full, including their endings.
Flem Snopes begins behind the counter of a country store. Around him are other Snopeses whose lives follow very different courses: tenant farmers, schoolteachers, traders, prisoners, politicians, and businessmen. Sharing the surname tells us less than knowing who raised whom, who works for whom, and who expects a relative to come to his aid.
William Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy runs from The Hamlet (1940), through The Town (1957), to The Mansion (1959). Frenchman’s Bend is the rural starting point; Jefferson becomes the center of Flem’s expanding interests. The novels revisit earlier events through different voices, sometimes changing details. In his prefatory note to The Mansion, Faulkner acknowledges those contradictions. Several branches can be drawn clearly, while some extended kinships remain unsettled.
Contents
Linda’s family and Eula’s relationships
Flem Snopes is Ab’s son. Jody Varner hires him as a store clerk; he gradually supplants Jody, marries Eula, and moves to Jefferson. He advances from the café to the municipal power plant and the bank, eventually occupying the former de Spain house. His relatives form several branches of the family; they are not all his descendants. Mink kills him at the end of The Mansion.
Eula Varner Snopes is Will and Mrs. Varner’s youngest daughter, Jody’s younger sister, Flem’s wife, and Linda’s mother. Her relationship with Hoake McCarron precedes her marriage to Flem. In Jefferson she becomes Manfred de Spain’s lover. She dies by suicide in The Town. The explanations offered afterward belong to the people interpreting her death; the novels give her private motives less certainty than they give the event.
Linda Snopes, later Linda Kohl, is Eula and Hoake’s daughter, raised in Flem’s household. Gavin Stevens helps her read, pursue education, and eventually leave Jefferson. The younger Mr. Stone, an Oxford lawyer, draws up her will leaving Flem whatever she might inherit from Eula. She meets and marries Barton Kohl in New York, serves in Spain, and returns deaf after a wartime explosion. Her later relationship with Mink helps bring the trilogy to its conclusion.
Hoake McCarron is Eula’s lover and Linda’s biological father. His mother is Alison Hoake; his unnamed father, McCarron, dies before Hoake courts Eula. In The Mansion, Hoake attends Linda’s New York wedding under the explanation that he is an old family friend. Linda recognizes who he is despite Gavin’s effort to protect the earlier story of her parentage.
Will Varner, often Uncle Billy or Uncle Will, owns much of Frenchman’s Bend’s land and business. He is Eula and Jody’s father, Linda’s grandfather, and Flem’s employer before becoming his father-in-law. The Hamlet reports the Old Frenchman land deeded to Flem and Eula before their wedding; Ratliff’s account in The Town describes cash and a purchase option instead. Varner wealth and bank stock later give Flem another route to power. “Uncle” is often a form of local address.
Mrs. Varner is Will’s wife and Eula and Jody’s mother. She brings Eula’s pregnancy to Will’s attention and demands that he stop Jody’s retaliation. She later becomes part of Flem’s maneuvering over Linda’s prospective inheritance.
Jody Varner initially manages much of his father’s business. He hires Flem, sends Eula to school, and tries to control her movements. Flem gradually takes over his place at the store. Jody’s protective and possessive behavior toward Eula is a sibling relationship, separate from the men courting her.
Manfred de Spain is Jefferson’s mayor and later the bank’s president. His affair with Eula connects Flem’s household to the town’s financial leadership. He relinquishes his bank interest to Flem and leaves after Eula’s death; Flem also acquires the de Spain house. Manfred is the son of the older Major de Spain, Ab’s landlord in the earlier recollections.
Labove, the Professor, teaches Eula at Frenchman’s Bend. Will Varner recruits him while he is studying at the university in Oxford. His obsession keeps him teaching after he completes his degrees. He attacks Eula, she resists him, and he leaves. He is neither her lover nor Linda’s father.
The Snopes branches
The family’s recurring names do not fit one unchanging genealogy. Montgomery Ward identifies I.O. as his father and Clarence as his half-brother; Mink’s descriptions of his connection to those men do not align neatly with that account. Byron’s father is the revival leader identified as Wesley, yet another passage calls I.O.’s wives Byron’s children’s grandmothers. Those differences should remain visible when we read across the books.
Ab Snopes is Flem’s father and a tenant farmer with a reputation for barn burning. The earlier stories reach us through recollection and accusation. His first wife, Vynie, is not Flem’s mother: their marriage was childless. Ab’s youngest sister is Eustace Grimm’s mother.
Mink Snopes is Flem and Isaac’s cousin, Yettie’s husband, and the father of two unnamed daughters. He murders Jack Houston after their dispute over his straying animal and the charges for its recovery. He expects Flem to intervene for him; the failure of that expectation grows into the revenge pursued in The Mansion.
Isaac “Ike” Snopes is an adult cousin of Flem and Mink who has an intellectual disability. Mrs. Littlejohn gives him lodging and care; Ratliff helps obtain money for him. His sexual attachment to Houston’s cow becomes an occasion for other men’s cruelty. Flem claims legal guardianship, which differs from the care Mrs. Littlejohn actually provides.
Launcelot “Lump” Snopes is a clerk and Mink’s cousin. His deceased schoolteacher mother gave him the name Launcelot. He organizes spectators around Ike and the cow, urges Mink to take money from Houston’s body, and supplies false testimony in the horse-refund dispute. He does not commit Houston’s murder.
I.O. Snopes moves through blacksmithing, teaching, the café and hotel, and mule dealing. His first wife is Montgomery Ward’s mother. His second wife’s sons include Clarence, Bilbo, Vardaman, and Doris. The narrator’s accounts of I.O.’s relationship to Eck vary in precision.
Montgomery Ward Snopes is I.O.’s son by his first wife. He accompanies Gavin to France and turns a military canteen into a prostitution business. Back in Jefferson, his photographic studio, Atelier Monty, conceals pornographic entertainment. A liquor prosecution sends him to Parchman, where he becomes Flem’s instrument against Mink. His covert gift of money to Mink complicates that role.
Clarence Egglestone Snopes is I.O.’s son by the second wife and Montgomery Ward’s half-brother. A former constable, he becomes a state senator and attempts to advance to Congress. Ratliff turns Will Varner against him, prompting his withdrawal before the election. Egglestone is part of Clarence’s name, not another politician.
Bilbo and Vardaman Snopes are twins in I.O.’s second household. Their stay with an older Snopes and his unmarried daughter includes the watermelon-patch episode. The account does not settle whether that older man is Flem’s father or uncle.
Doris Snopes is Clarence’s youngest brother. Clarence uses him to torment Byron’s children. Doris attempts to train the children as a hunting pack; they capture him and begin a fire around him before neighbors rescue him. He survives the episode.
Saint Elmo Snopes is I.O.’s adolescent son in The Hamlet, conspicuous in the store’s candy-stealing episode. He is distinct from the infant brought by a woman claiming to be I.O.’s wife, and from Eck’s son Wallstreet.
Eck, or Eckrum Snopes, is a blacksmith whose generosity makes him an exception to Ratliff and Gavin’s generalizations about the family. The Hamlet identifies Wallstreet as Eck’s son by his first wife; Eck later remarries. In The Town, he dies in an oil-tank explosion while searching for a missing child who proves to be alive elsewhere. Mrs. Eck receives compensation, which helps the family enter the grocery business.
Wallstreet Panic Snopes, later Wallstreet or Wall, is Eck’s older son. Miss Vaiden Wyott teaches him and encourages the shortened name. He builds a grocery and wholesale business with Ratliff as a partner. His honesty is why Ratliff sometimes speaks as though he were outside the Snopes family; that judgment does not erase the relationship.
Admiral Dewey Snopes is Eck’s younger son and Wall’s brother. He attends school and works in Wall’s newspaper and grocery enterprises. Wall and Wall’s wife help keep his education going.
Miss Vaiden Wyott is Wall’s teacher and mentor. She declines his marriage proposal and introduces him to the younger country woman he actually marries. Wall’s unnamed wife works beside him, insists Admiral Dewey continue school, and resists Flem’s attempt to gain a financial hold over the business.
Wesley Snopes, named in The Mansion, is the revival song leader introduced without a name in The Town. The matching accounts of his expulsion for abusing a young girl identify him across the novels. Byron and Virgil are his sons in that introduction; the later reference to I.O.’s wives as the children’s grandmothers complicates the genealogy.
Byron Snopes is the bank bookkeeper who absconds with money and goes toward Texas and Mexico. He fathers four children with a Jicarilla Apache woman and sends them back to Flem in Jefferson. Their mother’s name and their individual names are not supplied.
Virgil Snopes, Byron’s brother and Wesley’s younger son, goes to Memphis with Fonzo Winbush to study barbering. They lodge at Reba’s establishment without initially understanding that it is a brothel.
Byron’s four children are temporarily housed by Dink Quistenberry and Dewitt Binford before being sent back toward Mexico. Miss Eunice Habersham arranges their transfer through Travellers’ Aid in New Orleans and El Paso. Chick identifies a girl, two boys, and a fourth child whose sex he does not identify. The children’s retaliations include the attack on Doris. The narration’s hostile racial descriptions belong to its speakers.
Watkins Products “Wat” Snopes is Flem’s carpenter and builder. He remodels the de Spain house into the mansion and later works on the former Compson property.
Orestes “Res” Snopes sells livestock on the former Compson property. His feud with Mr. Meadowfill becomes entangled in a land deal for a filling station. He is distinct from Res Grier, whom Ratliff mentions in another story.
Eustace Grimm is Ab’s nephew and Flem’s first cousin. His appearance as a competing buyer helps hurry Ratliff, Bookwright, and Armstid into the Old Frenchman bargain. Ratliff discovers the family connection afterward.
Frenchman’s Bend: neighbors, witnesses, and traders
V. K. Ratliff is a sewing-machine salesman, trader, and storyteller moving between Jefferson and the countryside. He helps Ike and Mink’s household but also falls for Flem’s buried-treasure scheme. He later becomes Wall’s business partner and Gavin’s closest fellow interpreter of the Snopeses. His full name is Vladimir Kyrilytch Ratliff.
Mrs. Littlejohn keeps the village hotel and boardinghouse. She cares for Ike, lodges Ratliff, and assists people hurt or impoverished by the wild-horse auction. Her connection to Ike is daily care; no blood relationship is established.
Jack Houston is the farmer whom Mink kills. He owns the cow to which Ike becomes attached and the hound that threatens to expose the hidden body. Lucy Pate, his childhood acquaintance and eventual wife, dies when his stallion kills her, six months after their marriage. She is distinct from the unnamed woman who lived with him before his return to the Bend.
Henry Armstid and Mrs. Armstid are a farming couple. Henry risks the money his wife saved for their children’s shoes on a wild horse and suffers a broken leg. He later joins the Old Frenchman purchase and keeps digging after the supposed treasure has been exposed. Mrs. Armstid bears the cost of both ventures and works to support the household.
Odum Bookwright joins Ratliff and Armstid in buying the Old Frenchman place. He is distinct from Herman Bookwright, one of Eula’s suitors named in the later retelling, and Calvin “Cal” Bookwright, the whiskey maker called Uncle Cal.
Vernon Tull and Mrs. Tull are neighbors. An escaped horse causes Vernon’s injury; Mrs. Tull pursues a claim against Eck. The household has four daughters in The Hamlet.
Buck Hipps, the Texan, conducts the wild-horse auction. He associates with Flem and directs Mrs. Armstid to Flem for a refund; Flem avoids acknowledging ownership. Their cooperation and the disputed ownership should be kept separate.
Pat Stamper and Jim appear in Ratliff’s remembered horse-trading story about Ab. Stamper outwits Ab; Jim is Stamper’s Black hostler and helper. This Jim is different from Hampton’s deputy of the same name.
Ben Quick, often Uncle Ben, owns the goats in an early trading episode. Lon Quick is the constable associated with the Houston dispute. Theron Quick belongs to the later retelling of Eula’s suitors. The shared surname does not justify merging their actions.
Uncle Dick Bolivar is the diviner brought into the Old Frenchman treasure hunt. His title does not establish kinship with the buyers. The Old Frenchman himself belongs to the property’s legend; the stories do not securely identify him or establish that the rumored treasure exists.
Aaron Rideout is named as Ratliff’s restaurant partner at the end of The Hamlet. The Town gives the café partner as Grover Cleveland Winbush. These names should not be silently turned into aliases.
Brother Whitfield joins I.O. and Eck in proposing a supposed remedy for Ike’s attachment to the cow. The proposal tells us what the men believe; it does not establish that their remedy works.
Sam works as a driver in the Varner household. Hoake’s unnamed Black companion and messenger is a different person. Alison Hoake is Hoake’s mother, and the unnamed old Hoake is his maternal grandfather.
Jefferson: the bank, power plant, and local conflicts
The Sartoris family: The Civil War Colonel Sartoris is the father of the older banker called Colonel Sartoris. The banker is grandfather to the young pilot Bayard and his twin, John. John dies in the war; Bayard’s reckless driving brings about his grandfather’s fatal heart attack. De Spain then succeeds the banker. Narcissa Benbow becomes young Bayard’s wife; Mrs. Du Pre is the banker’s sister.
Grover Cleveland Winbush is Ratliff’s café partner in The Town, displaced by Flem, and later Jefferson’s night marshal. His visits to Montgomery Ward’s studio leave him absent during a pharmacy burglary. He is not one of the burglars. Fonzo Winbush studies barbering with Virgil; Montgomery Ward believes him to be Grover’s nephew.
Harker operates the municipal power plant. Otis Harker is a relative who substitutes there and later becomes night marshal. The narration is uncertain whether their relationship is nephew or cousin. Joe Buffaloe is the electrician whose homemade automobile helps precipitate the dispute behind de Spain’s mayoral rise.
Tom Tom Bird and Tomey’s Turl Beauchamp work as the plant’s day and night firemen, respectively. Turl has a relationship with Tom Tom’s young wife; the men later reconcile and cooperate in moving the brass into the water tank. Flem plays each against the other over the brass and the day shift.
Lonzo Hait and Mannie Hait are husband and wife. Lonzo works with I.O. in arranging collisions between mules and trains for railroad compensation, and dies with the mules. Mannie fights I.O. over the proceeds and later loses her house in the mule incident. Het, an elderly Black poorhouse resident, visits her, witnesses events, and carries messages to Gavin; she is not established as Mannie’s employee or relative.
Dink Quistenberry and Dewitt “Dee-wit” Binford each marry into the Snopes family and successively house Byron’s children. Dink takes over the hotel after I.O. leaves. Dewitt lives near Varner’s store and is paid to take the children in. Their wives’ precise positions in the family are not settled by the account.
Colonel Devries is the decorated veteran who opposes Clarence’s Congressional ambitions. Clarence exploits racial hostility surrounding Devries’s military service with Black soldiers. Ratliff’s intervention causes Clarence to withdraw; Devries subsequently wins the election.
Jason Compson sells the family’s remaining land to Flem, expecting an airfield development. Flem turns it into housing called Eula Acres. Wat renovates the old carriage house, and Res occupies it and keeps hogs nearby.
Mr. Meadowfill and Mrs. Meadowfill live beside Res’s hog lot. Mr. Meadowfill is a retired sawmill owner who quarrels with Res and tries to bind their daughter Essie to the household. His use of a wheelchair should not be read as proof that he cannot stand.
Essie Meadowfill and McKinley Smith are the young couple in the land dispute. Essie works in a bank and improves her mother’s living conditions. Smith is a former Marine from Texas who builds a house in Eula Acres. Gavin helps secure land and their marriage when Res’s scheme threatens Smith. Essie marries Smith, not a Snopes. Mr. Holland, her employer, runs the other bank in Jefferson, separate from Flem’s.
Uncle Willy Christian, Walter Christian, and Skeets McGowan are the pharmacist, his Black employee, and the soda-counter clerk. Their drugstore connects the burglary, Montgomery Ward’s prosecution, and Linda’s earlier reading lessons with Gavin. A shared surname does not establish that Willy and Walter are related.
Gavin’s family and Linda’s later life
Gavin Stevens is a lawyer, a public attorney, Maggie Mallison’s twin brother, and Chick’s maternal uncle. He loves Eula, but refuses the sexual relationship she offers. With Linda, education, affection, protection, marriage proposals, and financial trusteeship become intertwined. He does not marry her. He ultimately marries Melisandre, while continuing to act for Linda and to struggle with what she may have intended.
Charles “Chick” Mallison, Jr. is the son of Charles “Charley” Mallison, Sr. and Margaret “Maggie” Stevens Mallison. Chick’s mother is Gavin’s twin. Judge Lemuel Stevens is Gavin and Maggie’s father and Chick’s grandfather. Cousin Gowan supplies accounts of events before Chick was born; the narration does not calculate their exact cousin degree.
Aleck Sander grows up alongside Chick and is the son of Guster, the Mallison household’s cook, and Big Top. Little Top is Aleck’s older brother and Gowan’s hunting companion.
Matt Levitt is a mechanic, boxer, and Linda’s beau. He destroys Gavin’s gift-book and assaults Gavin; Linda repudiates him. Anse McCallum, son of Buddy McCallum, also fights Levitt. Buddy insists that Anse meet the conflict fairly.
Barton “Bart” Kohl is Linda’s Jewish sculptor partner and husband. They marry in New York in 1936 before joining the Loyalist side in Spain. Kohl dies when his aircraft is shot down. Linda’s deafness comes from a separate explosion involving her ambulance; the text leaves its exact cause unresolved. Ratliff initially hears and pronounces Kohl as Cole.
Melisandre Backus, later Harriss and Stevens, is Gavin’s earlier companion and eventual wife, also called Milly and Aunt Melisandre. Her first husband, Mr. Harriss, dies in New Orleans. Their unnamed son and daughter become Gavin’s stepchildren. The son attempts to kill the Argentine cavalry officer his sister wants to marry; Gavin and Rafe McCallum prevent the attempt. The daughter marries the officer. Rose Hill is Melisandre’s home.
The Finnish cobbler and Finnish tinsmith are two different men whom Linda brings into the mansion’s political conversations. The cobbler takes over the shop of Mr. Nightingale, whose son Tug Nightingale has served in the army. Tug and his father’s quarrel belongs to an earlier wartime history, not Linda’s Spanish experience.
The Black school’s principal and teachers face risks in Linda’s proposed educational campaign. She wants additional teaching and training opportunities, but the principal asks Gavin to intervene because her plan overlooks the dangers to his staff and pupils. Her later Sunday teaching takes place in a Black church; that fact alone does not establish a religious conversion.
Gihon is the federal agent who questions Gavin about Linda’s Communist Party membership and tries to obtain associates’ names in exchange for immunity. The party card is acknowledged; Gavin’s suspicions about Flem stealing it or writing the hostile graffiti remain suspicions. Linda later works at the Pascagoula shipyard as a tool checker.
Mink’s imprisonment and return
Yettie Snopes is Mink’s wife and the mother of their two daughters. After his imprisonment, he learns that she has returned to her own family and died, and that the daughters have moved away. The Mansion later reveals that the younger daughter runs a Memphis brothel, without Mink recognizing that connection.
Montgomery Ward and Reba Rivers have different roles in Mink’s prison story. Ward tricks Mink into an escape attempt arranged at Flem’s instigation, extending his confinement. Separately, Ward entrusts money to Miss Reba, a Memphis brothel keeper, to send anonymously. Mink mistakes the gift for help from Flem. Minnie works for Reba; Lucius Binford is Reba’s deceased former companion, distinct from Lucius Hogganbeck, Jefferson’s jitney driver.
Judge Brummage is named as Mink’s sentencing judge in the early prison account; later recollections call the judge Long. The initial defense lawyer is unnamed. Shuford H. Stillwell is a fellow prisoner who attacks Mink, escapes, and threatens him afterward. Jake Barron is killed by the guard Captain Jabbo during the later escape attempt.
Parchman’s successive unnamed wardens handle Mink’s correspondence and protect him from Stillwell. At Mink’s release, the warden administers Gavin’s payment for staying outside Mississippi; the escorting trusty keeps the money Mink asks him to return, allowing Mink to evade the condition.
Gavin’s unnamed Harvard classmate helps obtain the pardon and arranges the Memphis police’s search for Mink’s weapon.
Brother J. C. Goodyhay, also Joe, is a former Marine and preacher whose congregation helps Mink reach Memphis. Beth Holcomb, called Sister Holcomb, directs him to Goodyhay. Dad is the worker who steals Mink’s money; Albert helps at the church. Dad and Sister are forms of address here, not evidence of biological relationships.
Hub Hampton and Hubert Hampton Jr. are successive generations of the sheriff’s family. The younger man, Little Hub, signs the petition for Mink’s release. Ephriam “Eef” Bishop is sheriff when Mink returns and Flem is killed. Euphus Tubbs is an earlier jailer; Luther Biglin is Bishop’s jailer and the man who secretly watches Flem’s house. Biglin’s evening gap leaves Flem unprotected when Mink arrives. Buck Connors is Jefferson’s marshal, a different office from county sheriff.
Linda and Mink meet after she helps secure his release. He shoots Flem; she returns the pistol to Mink and directs his departure, and later sends money through Gavin and Ratliff. Gavin and Ratliff read her earlier actions as evidence that she anticipated the killing, but their accounts do not become a plainly witnessed agreement to murder Flem.
After the funeral, Linda returns the mansion to Major de Spain’s surviving sister and her daughter, Miss Allison, and leaves for New York. Mink walks west. The final imagery joins him to the dead without supplying an ordinary witnessed death notice.
Places and the order of events
The places that connect the cast
Place | People and relationships to remember |
Frenchman’s Bend | Varner land and store; Flem’s early employment and marriage; Houston and Mink’s dispute; Ratliff’s rural trading circuit. |
Old Frenchman place | Land tied to Eula’s marriage; Ratliff, Bookwright, and Armstid buy it after the buried-money deception. |
Jefferson | Flem’s café, the power plant, the bank, the Snopes Hotel, and the Stevens–Mallison household. |
De Spain house / Flem’s mansion | The same house passes into Flem’s possession, is remodeled by Wat, becomes Linda’s home after Spain, and is returned to the de Spain women after Flem’s death. |
Eula Acres | Housing developed on the former Compson land; Res, the Meadowfills, and McKinley Smith meet through the adjoining properties. |
Parchman | Mink’s long confinement and Montgomery Ward’s intervention in the failed escape. |
Memphis | Reba’s brothel; Virgil and Fonzo’s barbering studies; Mink’s search for a working pistol. |
New York, Spain, and Pascagoula | Linda’s partnership and marriage to Kohl; their separate wartime experiences; her later shipyard work. |
The sequence across the novels
Novel | The relationships that change |
The Hamlet | Flem enters the Varner business, marries the pregnant Eula, and obtains the Old Frenchman property. Mink kills Houston. The horse auction and treasure scheme impoverish other households; Flem leaves for Jefferson. |
The Town | Flem advances through Jefferson’s institutions. Eula’s affair with de Spain, Linda’s education, and the Varner inheritance become entangled. Eula dies; de Spain leaves; Linda goes to New York. The closing children’s episode returns the town to the wider Snopes family. |
The Mansion | Mink’s prison history is revisited; Linda marries Kohl, serves in Spain, returns, and pursues work and political commitments. Clarence’s ambitions and Res’s land scheme develop alongside Flem’s position. Mink is released and kills Flem; Linda leaves and Mink walks away. |
These rows follow the books’ movements rather than turning their inconsistent ages and intervals into one exact calendar. The extended retrospections in The Mansion overlap events already told in The Town.
Who is telling the story?
Novel or voice | How the account reaches us |
The Hamlet | Third-person narration moves among characters and incorporates Ratliff’s stories, village reports, and an imagined infernal fable. The Prince in that fable is not a person Flem literally meets. |
Chick Mallison in The Town | A younger participant recounting his own experience and stories from before his birth. His opening “we” often means Jefferson’s collective opinion. |
Gavin Stevens in The Town | A participant whose affection and protective ambitions shape his explanations of Eula, Linda, and Flem. His imagined bargains should be distinguished from the later accounts of actual documents. |
Ratliff in The Town | A traveling observer who supplements and sometimes corrects the other narrators. He can also invent private scenes while explaining what he thinks happened. |
The Mansion | First-person chapters include Ratliff, Chick, Gavin, and Montgomery Ward. Other chapters use third-person narration closely following particular characters, especially Mink. Its three part titles—Mink, Linda, Flem—are not three narrator names. |
For a reading method suited to these shifts, continue with How to Read Difficult Literature Without Getting Lost.
Names and aliases
Name on the page | Who it refers to |
Ab | Flem’s father. |
Ike / Isaac Snopes | Flem and Mink’s cousin. Ike McCaslin, the hunter and hardware-store partner, is a different man. |
Lump / Launcelot | The same Snopes clerk. |
Eck / Eckrum | Wall and Admiral Dewey’s father. |
Wallstreet Panic / Wall Street Panic / Wallstreet / Wall | Eck’s older son; the spacing and shortened forms vary. |
Atelier Monty | Montgomery Ward’s photographic studio in Jefferson. |
Clarence / C. Eggleston / Egglestone / Senator Snopes | Clarence Snopes; the name’s spelling also varies between the books. |
Wat / Watkins Products | Flem’s builder-kinsman. |
Res / Orestes | The Snopes livestock dealer, distinct from Res Grier. |
Uncle Billy / Uncle Will | Will Varner. |
McCarron | Usually Hoake in Eula’s story; the earlier unnamed McCarron is Hoake’s father. |
Linda Snopes / Linda Kohl | Eula’s daughter before and after marriage to Kohl. |
Bart / Barton Kohl | Linda’s sculptor husband; Ratliff initially hears and pronounces Kohl as Cole. |
Lawyer / Uncle Gavin | Gavin Stevens. |
Chick / Charles Mallison, Jr. | Gavin’s nephew, distinct from his father Charles or Charley. |
Margaret / Maggie | Gavin’s twin sister, Chick’s mother. The earlier Miss Maggie in The Hamlet is addressed as part of the Varner household. |
Milly / Aunt Melisandre / Aunt Em | Melisandre Backus Harriss, Gavin’s eventual wife. |
V. K. / Vladimir Kyrilytch Ratliff | The sewing-machine salesman and narrator. |
Miss Reba / Reba Rivers | The Memphis brothel keeper. |
Lon Quick | The constable; distinguish Ben and Theron Quick. |
Eef / Ephriam Bishop | The sheriff at the end of The Mansion. |
Little Hub / Hubert Hampton Jr. | The younger Hampton, distinct from his father Hub. |
Brother Goodyhay / J. C. Goodyhay / Joe | The preacher who helps Mink travel. |
Sister Holcomb / Beth Holcomb | A member of Goodyhay’s congregation. |
Dee-wit / Dewitt Binford | The man who houses Byron’s children; not Reba’s Lucius Binford. |
M. C. Snopes | The name Mink invents for his conversation with a newspaper reporter. |
With the names separated, the trilogy’s final conflict remains between people who claim very different obligations from the same family: Mink waits for a cousin’s help, Flem uses the clan to advance, and Linda acts within a household whose surname conceals her parentage.
Sources
William Faulkner, The Hamlet, Chatto & Windus, London, 1940; Faded Page transcription, eBook 20190651.
William Faulkner, The Town, Vintage Books, New York, January 1961 edition; first published 1957; Faded Page transcription, eBook 20220301.
William Faulkner, The Mansion, Chatto & Windus, London, 1961 edition; first published 1959; Faded Page transcription, eBook 20191005.
The English edition of The Hamlet omits part of the Ike-and-cow sequence. A supplementary digital transcription includes that passage and the name Launcelot, but does not identify its print edition. The English omission is documented in Michael Millgate’s “The Hamlet”, reprinted in Harold Bloom, ed., William Faulkner, Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, 2008, note 24.
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