Horace Benbow

The Benbows are one of Yoknapatawpha's oldest families, and Horace and his sister Narcissa are the first major characters whom Faulkner imaginatively recycles as major characters in a new novel. Horace is now "forty-three years old" (15), ten years older than he was in Flags in the Dust (1929), and the attraction he earlier felt for Belle has soured during the decade they have been married. Nonetheless he remains idealistic and squeamish, especially about sexuality. Narratively and thematically, the novel depends heavily on juxtaposing his attempt to come 'home' to Jefferson with his quest to learn the truth about what happened at the Old Frenchman place. In the trial scene he is trying to defend both Lee Goodwin's innocence and his own, with no success in either case.