Memphis: Miss Reba's in The Mansion (Location)

Reba Rivers' house is a brothel, one of several in Memphis' notorious red-light district. The Mansion refers to this side of Memphis life in a number of passages. "Mulberry and Gayoso and Pontotoc streets" (68), "that Catalpa Street house" (305), "joints and dives and cathouses" (83) - these and other references point to prostitution as a major element in Memphis' tourist economy, at least in Faulkner's fictions. Even as Mink heads for a pawn shop to purchase a gun, he unknowingly passes the Memphis brothel in which "forty-seven years ago" he slept with a white woman for the first time, and in which his long estranged "younger daughter is now the madam" (320). But the house where "Miss Reba" is the madam holds a special place in Faulkner's world: quite a few of his characters spend time there, in this novel and two others - Sanctuary (1931) and The Reivers (1962).