Presley boy (All Souls')

The Presley boy was Jim Clayburn’s next of kin and consequently the legal inheritor of the property after Jim’s death. The story’s protagonist, Sara Clayburn, does not like the Presley boy at all, describing him as “stupid”[1] and “fat”[2] and that she wanted to “[…] keep him out of here [Whitegates] as long as I [Sara] can”.[3] Sara succeeded in this because the Presley boy died before he could move into Whitegates. In the story he serves as a means of conveying the less sympathetic aspects of how Sara Clayburn perceives people placing obstacles in her path. This underlines Sara’s imperious and somewhat self-centered character.

[1] Edith Wharton, “All Souls’,” in: The Demanding Dead – More Stories of Terror and the Supernatural, ed. Peter Haining (London: Peter Owen Publishers, 2007), 184.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.