There Was a Queen

The thing that most stuck out to me in this story was how Faulkner depicted the death of the old Southern culture. Jenny, in her old age, represented the honor and pride of the old South while Narcissa represented the new, degraded state of the South after the Civil War. The fact that a Yankee took advantage of Narcissa over the letters that he had shows how the South was defeated and degraded by the North, at least in a cultural sense after all the carpetbaggers came down after the war. However, it's Narcissa's own foolishness in keeping the letters and her lack of honor for doing so that allows the Yankee to do so in the first place, showing that the degredation of Southern culture was rooted in the South itself and the abandonment of old values. Narcissa doesn't listen to Jenny's wisdom and she suffers for it. Jenny's feeble old age and lack of ability to walk on her own shows the weakness that the old South had in this new age. The most potent imagery is when Jenny fades away at the end in the dark, representing the dying of the old values of the South as Narcissa admits to what she's done. Jenny even puts on her old bonnet, sort of like a crown as she stands indignant against the fading of the old ways.