Myra Allanovna

Myra Allanovna in The Mansion is the Russian immigrant proprietor of an upscale New York store where she sells the neckties she designs. She is described by Ratliff as "a short dumpy dark woman in a dress that wouldn't a fitted nobody," but he adds that she has "the handsomest dark eyes I ever seen even if they popped a little" (186). (Faulkner almost certainly bases this character on Lucilla Mara de Vescovi, an Italian immigrant who opened Countess Mara, a men's neckwear company, in New York in the early 1930s; Countess Mara ties are still sold today.)