New York City, New York in The Mansion (Location)

Linda Snopes' story brings Gavin Stevens and V.K. Ratliff to New York City, where the novel spends much of Chapter 7. Linda and her fiance, Barton Kohl, live in an apartment in Greenwich Village that is also Kohl's studio as a scuptor. Ratliff calls the apartment "nice": "plenty of window-lights," "a wall full of books and a piano," and a lot of artwork, pictures and sculptures Ratliff isn't sure how to describe but which the novel indicates are very modern (191). Ratliff and Stevens stay at one unnamed hotel and meet Hoke McCarron at another. There is also a pair of detailed scenes at a haberdashery where Stevens takes Ratliff to buy a necktie; the store is owned by Myra Allanovna, probably a fictional name for a real designer. Linda and Kohl get married in City Hall (190), dine at "Twenty-One" (a well-known restaurant, 194), plan to celebrate at "the Stork Club" (another famous night spot) but take a horse-drawn carriage ride through "the Park" (i.e. Central Park) instead (194). Faulkner knew the city well, from multiple trips to publishers' offices; in the novel it is not described in any detail, but seen through the narrative eyes of Ratliff - who says "Grinnich Village," for example (192) - it serves as a more cosmopolitan, diverse, modernist alternative to Yoknapatawpha. Nonetheless, it is also a place where Ratliff holds his own among modern art and artists.