Town, The

Town, The, novel by William Faulkner, published in 1957, the second of a trilogy including The Hamlet and The Mansion.

Having come from Frenchman's Bend to Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, with his wife Eula Varner Snopes and Linda, her daughter by a former lover, Flem Snopes gradually entrenches himself in the town's economic life, moving through a succession of jobs up to a vice‐presidency of the Sartoris bank. In his wake come his cousins and their offspring like “rats or termites” to infest the town: Byron, a bank clerk and embezzler; I.O., a bigamist; Montgomery Ward, a pornographic photographer, who is a son of I.O.; and Eck, atypically honest, who is blown to bits in an explosion. Accompanying them are their offspring, including I.O.'s twins, Bilbo and Vardaman, and his oldest son, Clarence, and Eck's boy, Wallstreet Panic Snopes. Himself impotent and his marriage but a means of furthering his ambition and greed, Flem feigns ignorance of Eula's affair with Manfred de Spain, the mayor and bank president, biding his time until his knowledge can be turned to most advantage. The worldly De Spain's rival for Eula is Gavin Stevens, an idealistic yet naïve attorney who with his friend, the shrewd trader V.K. Ratcliff, is the Snopeses' chief opponent. Taunted by De Spain, Gavin challenges and is bloodied by the mayor at the Cotillion Ball, defending “chastity and virtue in women …whether they exist or not.” Flem, who has been given a sinecure by De Spain as superintendent of the town power plant, makes a rare error in his pursuit of profit when he steals some brass, leading Gavin to file suit, as much against De Spain as Flem. Eula offers herself to Gavin to drop the charge, but Gavin cannot reconcile her unashamed sensual pragmatism with his ideal view of her and sends her away. He turns his attention to Linda, trying to raise her above the Snopes level through books he gives her and his plans for a college education for her, but Flem refuses to send her away to school. Doubting that he is really her father, Linda rebels, although he cynically wins back her confidence so as to secure for himself her future inheritance of Will Varner's bank stock. With this achieved, Flem finally exposes Eula's long liaison with De Spain, who is forced to sell his stock to him and hand over the bank presidency. Eula, now aware of Flem's deception and the threat to Linda's future, commits suicide after asking Gavin to marry Linda, although he agrees only to help her. Gavin gets Linda away by sending her to New York to enjoy new surroundings, De Spain leaves Jefferson, and Flem moves into the De Spain mansion, having rid himself of other Snopeses who threaten his “respectability.”