Snopes, Twin Sister of Net

While Abner and Lennie Snopes' older son Flem is one of the most prominent inhabitants of Faulkner's imagination, and their younger son Sarty the central character of one of his greatest short stories, neither of their twin daughters gets much attention in the two texts in which they figure. This is the sister who never gets a first name - or to use a Faulknerian locution, this is 'notNet Snopes.' In "Barn Burning" both are described as "big, bovine, in a flutter of cheap ribbons" (9), and extremely lazy: they do very little to help with household chores, leaving most of the work to their mother and aunt. Not even a name enables us to tell them apart in The Hamlet, where they are simply described as “two hulking gals” who still take no part in the intensive labor their mother and aunt engage in (15). We speculate that the sisters are "the Snopes girls" referred to in The Town (383): the "Mrs. Dink Quistenberry" who is "one of Mr Snopes's sisters or nieces or something" (378). "Sister or niece" is hardly definitive, nor is the reference to Dink himself as Flem's "brother-in-law or whatever it was" (378). But if this identification is correct, then this twin (or perhaps her sister) helps her husband run the Snopes Hotel in Jefferson.