Mount Vernon, Mississippi (Location Key)

There is a real Mount Vernon in northern Mississippi. Measured from Oxford, the original of Jefferson, it is eighteen miles to the southeast. In Flags in the Dust it is referred to as a "hamlet" "six miles away" from the MacCallum place, where the "young woman" whom Lee MacCallum is courting lives (350-51). The MacCallums live over fourteen miles northeast of Jefferson, so by putting his 'Mount Vernon' even further away from his version of Oxford - i.e. from Jefferson - Faulkner may be trying to disguise the relationship between reality and his fictional re-presentation of it. "Mount Vernon" is mentioned a second time in As I Lay Dying, again in connection with the MacCallums: discussing the Bundrens' plan to get to Jefferson, Samson says they "could have gone around up by Mount Vernon, like MacCallum did" on his way home (119).