Lorraine

Character Key Number: 
1332
Display Name: 
Lorraine
Sort Name: 
Lorraine
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

In The Sound and the Fury Lorraine is the woman Jason is seeing in Memphis, Tennessee. In the letter she sends him, she calls Jason "my sweet daddy" (193). Their relationship seems based on the money he gives her and the sex she gives him. Jason thinks of her as "a good honest whore" (233). His ideas about other people, especially women, are hardly reliable, but in this case it does seem likely that Lorraine is one of the many Memphis prostitutes in Faulkner's fiction. Presumably she is also the woman in the "Appendix Compson" whom the residents of Jefferson refer to euphemistically as Jason's "friend from Memphis" (340). (There is also a Miss Lorraine in Sanctuary who seems to be the madam of a Memphis bordello, but based on her description it seems likely that she is a different character.)