Unnamed Peeping Tom

This man may exist, or be a figment of Minnie Cooper's imagination, or even an invention of the customer in the barber shop who refers to him, obliquely, as the "man scare" that Minnie reportedly had "about a year" before "Dry September" begins; the customer describes him as "a man on the kitchen roof" who was looking at Minnie "undress" (171). We have labeled him 'white' because from the larger story it seems clear that if the reported voyeur had been identified as 'black,' the white men of the town would have had to punish someone.