Reading Minnie Cooper as Living with Dementia in William Faulkner’s Dry September Summer Jade Dolan College

William Faulkner’s Dry September narrates the forming of a lynch mob in response to an improbable accusation of sexual violence, made by an aging spinster, against a black watchman, Will Mayes, in the small fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, in 1930. In this essay, I will examine how Cooper can be read as a character who is living with some form of dementia, or a similar progressive neurological condition (hereafter referred to as ‘PNC’), of which the accusation of sexual assault leveled by her against Will Mayes, however unjustifiable and undeniably fatal, can be read as a symptom. Furthering on this, I will also demonstrate that although the nature of Cooper’s role within the text – that of the false accuser – necessarily elicits disgust from readers (who are aware of the fatal consequences of her accusation), Faulkner’s additional rendering of Cooper as a character whose disability is exploited by the community surrounding her, in order to justify their desire to inflict violent retribution against black men, also prompts pity.

There are several indicators within the text that Minnie Cooper is living with a PNC. The first of these, which initially incited this reading, concerns the origins of the ‘rumor….story…...