SnopessInSY

Snopesism here becomes a source of humor, a kind of counterpoint to the novel's grim main narrative. Temple's ordeal in the Memphis whorehouse is juxtaposed to the rural innocence of Virgil Snopes, who thinks the madam is the landlady of a boarding house and all the girls her daughters. The corrupt trial that ends in the lynching of an innocent man is Clarence Snopes' opportunity to try to make a few dollars. The patrician Horace tries, unsuccessfully, to keep Clarence from coming inside the Benbow family house, but compared to his Gothic encounters with genuine evil in the story, the maneuverings by which he tries to avoid contamination from Clarence's venality seem like episodes in a comedy of (bad) manners.