The Town

The second novel in William Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, following The Hamlet and preceding The Mansion, is set in the fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, in Yoknapatawpha County. Spanning roughly two decades from the early 1900s through the late 1920s, the novel chronicles the relentless rise of Flem Snopes from impoverished outsider to the most powerful man in Jefferson. Three narrators take turns telling the story: Charles Mallison, a boy growing up during these events; his uncle Gavin Stevens, the city attorney and an idealist; and V.K. Ratliff, a shrewd sewing machine salesman who serves as the town's most perceptive observer.

Flem arrives in Jefferson with his wife Eula, his infant daughter Linda, and a wagonload of furniture, having already risen from tenant farmer to dominant figure in the rural hamlet of Frenchman's Bend. There, he became clerk in old Will Varner's store, married Varner's beautiful daughter Eula after she became pregnant by another man, and swindled Ratliff out of a half-interest in a restaurant by salting an abandoned plantation with silver dollars. In Jefferson, Flem takes over the restaurant and begins his ascent.

His first significant position is superintendent of the town power plant, a new job created for him by Mayor Manfred de Spain. The town understands why: De Spain and Eula have become lovers, and the appointment is tacit payment to the husband. In this role, Flem schemes to steal brass fittings by manipulating his two Black firemen, Tom Tom Bird and Tomey's Turl Beauchamp, telling each that the other is stealing brass and framing him. The plan collapses when the firemen discover the deception, unite, and dump all the brass into the water tank. Flem pays the shortfall out of pocket and resigns. The water tank becomes what Charles describes not as a monument but as a footprint, marking where Flem stood before moving on.

A parade of Snopes relatives fills every vacancy Flem leaves behind. Ratliff explains that Flem is "farming Snopeses," managing relatives who take each position he vacates. Among them are I.O. Snopes, a bigamist who speaks in garbled proverbs, and Byron Snopes, who becomes a clerk at the Sartoris bank. Meanwhile, Flem's cousin Mink Snopes murders a local man named Zack Houston in Frenchman's Bend and is arrested, spending months in jail waiting for Flem to save him. At his trial, Mink calls out for Flem, but Flem never comes.

Gavin, though outwardly concerned with the Snopes threat, is consumed by his feelings for Eula. His twin sister Margaret recognizes this and arranges for the Cotillion Club, a social organization of Jefferson's leading families, to accept Eula. At the Christmas Cotillion Ball, the rivalry between Gavin and De Spain erupts: De Spain dances with Eula in a way that shocks the guests, and the two men fight in the alley. Gavin is beaten badly but keeps getting up.

Gavin files a lawsuit against De Spain's bonding company over the missing brass, forcing a public hearing. The legal arguments become absurdly circular: If the brass is in the tank, it was stolen but remains city property, so no crime occurred. Eula visits Gavin's office late at night and offers to sleep with him, apparently to protect De Spain. Gavin refuses. Eula tells him he wastes too much time expecting instead of simply living. The next morning, Gavin's father, Judge Stevens, announces the charges have been withdrawn. Shattered, Gavin leaves Jefferson for Heidelberg University in Germany, entrusting Ratliff with watching over the town.

During Gavin's absence, the power structure shifts. Colonel Sartoris, the bank president, dies, and De Spain takes his place. An audit reveals Byron Snopes has been embezzling. Byron flees to Mexico, De Spain covers the stolen funds, and Flem becomes vice president of the bank. When Gavin returns, he finds Flem transformed: wearing a broad black hat in place of his old cloth cap, studying banking from inside the teller's cage, and quietly moving his personal money to the rival Bank of Jefferson. Ratliff warns Gavin that Flem's aim has shifted from wealth to respectability.

Gavin turns his attention to Linda Snopes, now a teenager. He meets her after school for ice cream and poetry, what Margaret calls "forming her mind." A young Ohio mechanic named Matt Levitt courts Linda and sees Gavin as a rival, leading to a confrontation that ends with Linda slapping Matt and clinging to Gavin in tears. After Matt is driven from town, Gavin sends Linda catalogues from eastern colleges, determined to get her away from Jefferson. But Flem refuses to let her go.

Gavin visits Eula and learns the truth: Flem cannot allow Linda to leave and marry, because the moment Linda does, Eula will leave Flem and he will lose access to old Will Varner's fortune. Linda is the link binding Eula to the marriage. Eula tells Gavin to marry Linda himself, but he refuses.

Flem methodically purges Jefferson of embarrassing Snopeses. When his cousin Montgomery Ward Snopes is discovered running a peep show of pornographic photographs behind a photography studio, Flem steals the key to the studio from the sheriff's office and has moonshine whiskey planted inside, ensuring Montgomery Ward is convicted of a federal liquor offense rather than a pornography charge that would embarrass a bank vice president. Flem also pays I.O. Snopes $900 to leave Jefferson permanently after I.O.'s mules stampede through a widow's yard and set her house on fire.

The crisis arrives when Flem allows Linda to attend the University of Mississippi, but only after she innocently signs a will bequeathing her share of any inheritance from Eula to Flem. Flem takes this document to Will Varner's wife, knowing she will show it to her husband. Old Will, enraged that Flem has used his own granddaughter to disarm him, drives to Jefferson in a fury. On a Wednesday evening, Eula visits a beauty parlor for the first time, gives Charles an envelope for Gavin, and that night kills herself with a pistol.

In her final meeting with Gavin, Eula reveals that Flem is impotent, explains that De Spain refused to surrender the bank because his manhood demanded he fight, and makes Gavin swear to marry Linda if necessary. After Eula's death, De Spain attends the funeral, then leaves Jefferson permanently. His bank stock passes to Flem, who becomes president.

Linda tells Gavin she knows Flem is not her father. Gavin swears that he is, and Linda accepts this, weeping for the first time, relieved that her mother loved and was loved. Flem erects a marble monument over Eula's grave inscribed: "A Virtuous Wife is a Crown to her Husband / Her Children rise and call Her Blessed." Sitting with Linda in the car before the unveiled monument, Flem spits out the window and says, "Now you can go." Linda departs for New York. Gavin weeps openly, telling Ratliff that Eula had a capacity for love but twice failed to find someone brave enough to accept it.

In a coda, four feral children, half-Apache and tagged like parcels, arrive by train from Byron Snopes in El Paso. After they kill and eat a wealthy newcomer's expensive dog, Flem pays the owner and ships the children back to Texas. Ratliff observes that Flem has cleared Jefferson of every objectionable Snopes, leaving only himself as president of the bank and the equally respectable Wall Snopes, Eck's honest son who built a grocery business, as the sole remaining members of the clan in town.