The Queen

There was a Queen by William Faulkner is a story about a woman who marries into this proud family, all the men die, so that it is only her, her aunt in law, her son, and the help left. She had received letters that would embarrass the family earlier in life and they were found by a Jewish man who she then slept with in order to retrieve them. The old woman then dies and the story ends. Basically this story seems to have to themes, that of pride and race. First of all, Narcissa is too prideful to tell the uncle to go after the man who wrote the letters and too prideful to burn them, so later she has to have sex with another man to get them back. This hurts the pride of the Aunt to the point that she becomes so upset she dies. Pride is also related to race in that the maid Elnora feels that she is better than Narcissa because she has more high class blood in her and the fact that she is part black doesn't diminish that fact. Obviously to the white people however it does diminish it. This story also shows a anti-semitic sentiment when the old woman tells the Jewish investigator to leave just because he is a Jew.