Rosa Millard

Referred to by both Bayard and Ringo as Granny, Rosa Millard is one of Faulkner's most formidable old women. She is Louisa Hawks sister and John Sartoris' mother-in-law. In The Unvanquished, readers see her bringing up the boys, managing the plantation during the Civil War, and finding a way to provide for the people of Yoknapatawpha by outsmarting the Yankees. While she is a southern lady, clad with hoop skirts, Christianity and gentility, she willingly steps out of the passivity attached to women and adapts to the war by conducting her own kinds of campaigns against the Yankees - yet at the same time tries to live up to her responsibility as a virtuous and honest role model for Bayard and Ringo. This struggle often leads to comic situations in the novel, but her faith in Southern traditions and the chivalric code betrays her tragically when she presumes upon it to take on the outlaw Grumby, who apparently has no compunctions about killing a 'lady' in cold blood. The multitude of people who attend her funeral - "more than a hundred," according to Bayard (155) - includes whites and blacks, and both hill people and town people from Jefferson, which speaks to her influence and status within the community.