Julia Benbow
Character Key Number:
29
Display Name:
Julia Benbow
Sort Name:
Benbow, Julia
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?:
Yes
Biography:
Julia Benbow, the wife of Will Benbow, and mother of Horace and Narcissa, is mentioned in both Flags in the Dust and Sanctuary. According to the first novel, she died when Narcissa was seven years old. Narcissa remembers her as "a gentle figure . . . like a minor shrine, surrounded always by an aura of gentle melancholy and an endless and delicate manipulation of colored silken thread" (172). She is not named in the second novel, and appears only in Narcissa's references to "my father and mother" (118) and "our father and mother" in conversations with Horace (184).