substantial fortunes, she has had to rely upon her manipulation of her cautious, timid, browbeaten husband, Horace. He is no businessman, just her financial support; although he is pliable enough for her ambition, that ambition has driven him into becoming merely the tool of her insatiable greed. He uses a wheelchair.

Her brother Oscar married Birdie, his much-maligned alcoholic wife, solely to acquire her family's plantation and cotton