Snopes, Mother of Eck

The mother of Eck is mentioned in The Hamlet because when Eck's first wife dies, Eck leaves their son, Wallstreet Panic, with his mother to raise, but she plays that role outside the narrative. She is also mentioned in the other two volumes in the Snopes trilogy, again in terms of something that happens outside the narrative, if it happens at all. Because Eck is such a good and generous person, in The Town Gavin Stevens declares that he 'must' be illegitimate, that his mother was committing adultery with someone not named Snopes when he was conceived. In The Mansion, it is Montgomery Ward Snopes who asserts the same thing. But neither novel provides any evidence to support this assertion; it can tell us something about what 'Snopes' means, even to members of the family, but it tells us nothing about Eck's mother.