Jefferson Hardware Store|McCaslin Hardware Store in The Mansion (Location)

The Jefferson hardware store becomes a site in The Mansion's narrative when Mink Snopes goes there to buy buckshot shells and Ike McCaslin, a "junior partner" in the business, refuses to sell him any (34). But much later the narrator details the history of the business, in what seems to be Faulkner's attempt to reconcile inconsistencies about the store's ownership that appear in the collected Yoknapatawpha fictions. As in The Sound and the Fury, Jason Compson works in the town's hardware store, but now the narrator explains that Earl Triplett, who owned the business in the earlier novel, is only its manager; the store is "Uncle Ike McCaslin's" (355). The narrator goes on to note that Triplett "eliminated Uncle Ike from the business" before Jason "eliminated Triplett," so that eventually "for all practical purposes Jason Compson was now the McCaslin Hardware Company" (355). This account introduces inconsistencies of its own - who was Ike's original senior partner? - but it serves The Mansion mainly to explain how Jason could afford to buy back his family's "original holding" (355).