Montgomery Ward Snopes

The son of I.O. Snopes and his first wife, Montgomery Ward is extremely dishonest and selfish. When the U.S. enters World War I, he dodges the impending draft by joining Gavin Stevens for service with the Y.M.C.A. in France, where he "looks around" at the opportunities offered by the war (111). Eventually he sets up a brothel in Paris. Returning to Jefferson after the war, he dresses like a French bohemian - wearing "a black suit and a black overcoat without any sleeves and a black thing on his head kind of drooping over one side like an empty cow's bladder made out of black velvet" (127) - and carrying "a passel of French postcards" (171). The "bladder" is a beret, and the postcards are pornographic. In what he calls his "Atelier Monty," he poses as a photographer while actually showing his French pornography at night to a large clientele of men from Yoknapatawpha and beyond (172). He is eventually exposed, although his cousin Flem and the town's officials conspire to preserve Jefferson's reputation by having him convicted of running a bootlegging operation rather than a peep show.