Percival Brownlee

Submitted by sfr on Thu, 2020-02-20 09:09
Character Key Number: 
2736
Display Name: 
Percival Brownlee
Sort Name: 
Brownlee, Percival
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

In Go Down, Moses Buck McCaslin purchases Percival Brownlee from Bedford Forrest, and quickly learns that Percival is unable to perform any of the tasks to which he and his brother Buddy assign the slave. When Percival is emancipated as a result of the McCaslins' frustrations with him, he refuses to leave the plantation. He disappears during the Civil War, but reappears during Reconstruction as a preacher, "leading the singing also in his high sweet true soprano voice," and again in the "entourage" of an Army paymaster (278). He is repeatedly figured as effeminate, particularly as he leaves town with a "defiant female glance" (278). The last rumors describe him as "an old man now and quite fat . . . the well-to-do proprietor of a select New Orleans brothel" (279).

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