Character Study

Louis Benfield Jr.
"When Daddy leaned his face down towards mine there in the sitting room and looked directly at Momma and said, 'Madness,' I was somewhat confused since I didn't see any reason for people like Miss Pettigrew to go mad, but Momma was openy dismayed and deflated." (pg28)
“Daddy didn’t see it or anyway didn’t make it like he did and I don’t know as it would have meant much at all to him if he had, but I saw it, saw it as Momma switched it on, and it struck a note with me. And I said to myself without really saying it but just knowing it right off, this is the sort of thing that sets me apart from Daddy and him from me and both of us from everybody else, not simply that I saw the porch light come on and he didn’t and nobody else would care anyway, but more that Momma could switch on a single bulb and switch on something in me with it, something of sadness and grief and shot through me with the melancholy of twilight, something I could not be sure Daddy would know as I knew it, felt as I felt it. “ (pg 82)


Louis, the narrator of the story, is an innocent teenage boy who grows up hearing about the events of his small town from his dad. In the beginning of the story, Louis is innocent and a little bit naïve. When he narrates the death of Miss Pettigrew in the beginning of the story, he is so blunt about her falling off the water tower and killing herself. He doesn’t fully understand why Miss Pettigrew is even insane. His first realization that there might be something truly wrong with some of the people of this town is when he sees his mom turning on a light. It’s like a light bulb just lit up in Louis at that moment and he realized that people were depressed. Louis is able to feel the sadness that his mother feels, and Louis feels that his dad can’t feel that sadness for some particular reason. He starts to mature from that point and learns some of the history of his town that causes its inhabitants to do the odd things they do. Daddy and Louis start to talk and have important conversations about the Neelyites and specifically Miss Pettigrew. His understanding and being able to discuss the grave matters represents Louis’s step into the adult world.


Momma (Inez Benfield)
“And Momma and all the women of Neely suffered a kind of defeat that afternoon because they themselves were not elegant, did not lead elegant lives, and required for their own satisfaction that Miss Pettigrew do it for them. And that’s why Momma stormed off to the kitchen and to her sink and her window. I didn’t really understand it then, but something had passed on that day and Momma was obliged to mourn for it.” (pg 29)
“Momma is the one of us who tends to suffer most through the season. She hold up well enough until Christmas and on into the New Year, but by the first week in February Momma is a lost woman.”(pg 70)

Momma really liked Miss Pettigrew and thought very highly of her. When she finds out that Miss Pettigrew has gone crazy, she goes to her window and her sink to do the dishes and stare at her apricot tree. Washing the dishes seems like something Momma does every time something bad happens. It’s her way of coping with the tragedy. When Sheriff Browner dies, Momma does the dishes, and she does the same when Miss Pettigrew commits suicide. At first I thought Momma was just weird but by the time Louis starts to realize what is wrong with people, I figured out that Momma is a very weak and feeble person on the inside. She suffers from depression which causes her to cry and nap a lot. In the second quote Louis even says that his mom seems crazy. Even though Momma is depressed she is very social and loves to talk to her “negro grapevine,” Mrs. Phillip J. King about her favorite topic, Miss Pettigrew.



Miss Pettigrew (Myra Angelique Pettigrew)
"Daddy said it was a bedsheet, a fitted bedsheet, and he said she was wearing it up on her shoulders like a cape with two of the corners knotted around her neck. She was standing barefoot on an oak stump, he said, standing on the one nearest the front walk where there was ordinarily a clay pot of geraniums, and he said her hair was mostly braided and bunned up in the back but for some squirrel-colored strands of it that had worked their way loose and hung kind of wild and scraggly down across her forehead and almost to her nose.”(pg 9)

Miss Pettigrew is the wealthy spinster of the Pettigrew Fortune. She has a pet monkey named Junious (Mr. Britches). She is the most elegant and sophisticated woman in the town of Neely, North Carolina. She used to go out in public and was very sociable until her brother Wallace Amory Jr. agreed to give her hand in marriage to Mr. Nance. Since that day, Miss Myra Angelique stayed in her house for years at a time with her negro help, Aunt Willa. One day, Miss Pettigrew came out of her house with a bedsheet tied around her neck and ran around her house like a superhero. People start to realize at that moment that Miss Pettigrew is insane. After the bedsheet incident, Miss Pettigrew comes out of the house looking elegant along with her pet monkey Mr. Britches. Miss Pettigrew walks to the water tower, climbs it, and lets go of the handles to kill herself. The death of her doesn’t stop Louis from talking about her, and his story revolves around the life and death of Miss Myra Angelique Pettigrew, the town aristocrat.


Daddy (Louis Benfield Sr.)
“Daddy was afflicted by what Momma called an involvement with tobacco, which seemed to mean that he was always either smoking, had just smoked, or was preparing to smoke a Tareyton."(pg10)

Louis Benfield Sr., Louis’s dad, is the man that provides little Louis with all of his amusing stories. Daddy happens to know about everything that went and goes on in Neely. His only vices are smoking and cussing, and those privileges are limited by his wife, Inez Benfield. She doesn’t let Daddy carry around a lighter because it is a fire hazard, so he puts matches all over town to make sure that he will have a light to light his cigarette where ever he is. He is a heavy smoker, and when Momma gets Daddy a Zippo for Christmas, he quits smoking. Daddy tells great stories about the people of Neely and Neely itself, and it is only because of him that Louis fully understands what is wrong with some people in Neely along with it’s history.