Unnamed Mistress of Jason Compson IV

Jason Compson IV's mistress is described as "a big plain friendly brazenhaired pleasantfaced woman no longer very young, in round 'picture' hats and (in its season) an imitation fur coat" (339-40). The residents of Jefferson refer to her euphemistically as "his friend from Memphis" (340). During her visits, she is "domestic, uxorious, connubial," but on Sunday afternoons she is on the bus "back to Memphis" (340); she enables Jason to experience a measure of connubial bliss without endangering his newfound freedom in adulthood, after the death of his mother. (The "picture" in the term "picture hats" refers not to Hollywood movies but to 18th-century portraits of the British aristocracy; a "picture hat" is very wide-brimmed and elaborate.)