“It Aint Nothing But Jest Another Snopes”

This chapter investigates how William Faulkner presented poor whites and white trash across his oeuvre, with particular emphasis on his fairly unheralded Snopes trilogy. The chapter charts how poor whites are presented in different eras of his writings, from As I Lay Dying until the final Snopes novel published shortly before his death. While Faulkner is well known for his attempts at discussing the evolving racial situation in the South since the end of the Civil War, most critics have considered his depiction of whiteness as fairly homogeneous, a fact that this chapter's sustained focus on the Snopeses seeks to complicate. In short, while the Snopeses are frequently villainous characters, they are still met with language that stigmatizes them as a racial other, and as an inferior form of whiteness to the more well-to-do denizens of Yoknapatawpha.