Sophonsiba Beauchamp
Character Key Number:
148
Display Name:
Sophonsiba Beauchamp
Sort Name:
Beauchamp, Sophonsiba
Parent Character Key:
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?:
Yes
Biography:
In Go Down, Moses Fonsiba Beauchamp is the fifth child of Tomey’s Turl and Tennie Beauchamp. She is named Sophonsiba after white mistress of the plantation where Tennie was enslaved. In 1886, at the age of seventeen, she marries a Northern black, and moves with him to a farm in Arkansas, where Ike McCaslin finds her and arranges for her $1000 inheritance to be issued to her in monthly installments. Although Ike attempts to remove her from the squalor of her new life in Arkansas, her priorities are evident in the two words she offers in return: "I'm free" (267).