GibsonsInTES

The story that Faulkner tells in this text occurs because Dilsey gets sick, and the Compson family hires another black woman, Nancy, to take her place. For the first half of the story, "Dilsey is sick in her cabin" (292); she "gets well" in the second half, returning to cook dinner and supper on the story's last day (297). Apparently Dilsey's children are all living on the Compson place: in the scenes in the kitchen with Nancy, Dilsey mentions both Frony (298) and Versh (300), and at another point Caddy mentions Dilsey's other child, T.P., and how he got "scared on Hallowe'en" (294), but only Dilsey herself appears physically in the story. (Interestingly, Nancy is pregnant in the story, but even though she recurs as a major character in the later Requiem for a Nun (1951), no mention is ever made of Nancy's child.)