Unnamed Jefferson Townspeople 20

For most of Intruder in the Dust the town streets are thronged with people, mostly men, who anticipate the lynching as a kind of drama. It's not clear how many of the men in this mob are residents of Jefferson, rather than country people who've driven into town. At one point, however, the narrator describes the newer residents of Jefferson as a group. They are "prosperous young married couples" with "two children each" and "an automobile" and "memberships in the country club and the bridge clubs and the junior rotary" (118). They live in "houses designed in Florida and California" that come with "patented electric gadgets for cooking and freezing and cleaning" (118). The housework is done by "colored maids" while the housewives "puff lipstick-stained cigarettes over shopping bags in the chain groceries and drug stores" (118). It seems that they are separate from the crowd in the streets.