In her conversation with Gavin Stevens, Pruitt's unnamed mother recalls how poor she and her husband were when they married: "we didn't even own a roof over our heads. We moved into a rented house, on rented land" (96-97). This is all readers hear about Mr. Pruitt, but it suggests that at the time the story takes place the family owns the land they farm.
Like her daughter-in-law, this Mrs. Fentry died before she was forty. According to Pruitt, it was "that place," the poor Fentry farm on which she lived and the impoverished life she led there, that killed both women at such a young age (96).
All readers learn about Mrs. G. A. Fentry is that, like her mother-in-law before her, she died before she was forty. According to Pruitt, it was "that place," the poor Fentry farm on which she lived and the impoverished life she led there, that killed her (96).
Pruitt tells Gavin Stevens that Fentry's "grandpa" worked the family's small, poor farm "until he died between the plow handles" working in the field (97). He was probably the first Fentry to settle in Yoknapatawpha.
James Longstreet was arguably the best corps commander in the Confederate army. G.A. Fentry served under him as well as Stonewall Jackson during the Civil War; after the war, he and his son paid tribute to Longstreet when they named the child they adopted "Jackson and Longstreet Fentry" (100).
Thomas Jackson received the nickname "Stonewall" during the First Battle of Bull Run. Until his death in 1863 he was one of the Confederacy's most successful generals, and one of Robert E. Lee's most trusted commanders. G.A. Fentry, who served under Jackson, named both his son and adopted grandson in his honor.
In "Tomorrow," "Haven Hill store" is where the Fentrys buy their supplies (100); it is within riding distance of their farm. Neither the store nor Haven Hill are mentioned in any other of the fictions.
Apparently except for Fentry, the workers at Quick's sawmill are all black. At least, when Isham Quick describes Fentry's arrival at the mill, he says he did "the same work" and drew "the same pay as the niggers done" (103).
The narrator of "Tomorrow" refers once to "all the people in our country - the Negroes, the hill people, the rich flatland plantation owners" (91). He is explaining that, despite his Uncle Gavin's formal education at Harvard and Heidelberg, he knows how to talk to "all the people" so that they understand him. This is a rare passage in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, in which the population of the county is aggregated across racial and class lines, though the intent of the passage is apparently to praise Gavin rather than the county's shared community.
