The Hamlet
Hamlet, The,novel by Faulkner, published in 1931, the first of a trilogy including The Town and The Mansion.
In the 1890s, Will Varner, the mild-mannered economic power of Frenchman's Bend, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, rents some land to Ab Snopes, whose grotesque, ruthlessly greedy son Flem is installed by the 30-year-old Varner heir Jody as a clerk in the Varner store to dissuade Ab from burning the barn, his usual way with landlords. Instead, Flem takes over Varner positions, property, and power as his relatives, including the shrewd, weasly I.O., the idiot Ike, and the primitive Mink, begin to dominate or demoralize the town, to the horror of the compassionate and rational V. K. Ratcliff, a back-country trader. When Varner's daughter Eula, a mindless, sensual female, becomes pregnant, she is married off to Flem in return for cash and the deed to the crumbling pre-Civil War mansion, Frenchman's Place. A different passion overwhelms...
[The entire page is 359 words long]
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