Narcissa Benbow Sartoris

A "large woman in her thirties" (738), Narcissa Sartoris, nee Benbow, is descended from one of the leading Yoknapatawpha families. From a sociological perspective, there is no basis for Elnora to call her "trash" (734). On her first direct appearance in the story she appears (perhaps just to Miss Jenny) as displaying "something of that heroic quality of statuary" (738). But she is by no means the "queen" of the story, and on the whole the narrative seems to agree with Elnora that, despite marrying Bayard and living as his widow in the mansion for a decade with her son, Benbow Sartoris, "She won't never be a Sartoris woman" (730). As Faulkner creates and re-creates her character from Flags in the Dust to Sanctuary to this story, she is depicted with less and less sympathy. The first novel depicts her receiving and losing the letters that she recovers in this story - in a way that makes the extreme sexual prissiness she displays in the second novel more complex.