Miss Eunice Habersham

"An old white spinster of seventy" (92), Eunice Habersham is the last descendant of one of the three original white settlers of Yoknapatawpha. She still lives in the house in town he built, and the descendant of one of his slaves still works for her, but she is extremely poor, eking out a living raising produce and chickens on her five acres of land and selling them door-to-door. There is, however, nothing impoverished about her spirit. Having grown up "almost inextricably like sisters" with Lucas Beauchamp's wife Molly (85), she joins Chick and Aleck in the quest to prove his innocence, repeatedly showing her grit without ever sacrificing her gentility. The novel's attitude toward her is slightly comic, but she is one of Faulkner's impressive old women. She is, in fact, essentially the same character as Belle Worsham, in Go Down, Moses (1942); it's not clear why Faulkner gave her a new name and changed a few details about her life in this later novel.