Unnamed Negro Aunt in Vicksburg

In the magazine version of "Delta Autumn," this woman lives in Vicksburg with her family, and was willing to take in her niece after her father's death. When this niece tells Ike McCaslin that her aunt "took in washing," he suddenly realizes the racial nature of the "effluvium" her niece brings with her (278, 277). In the Yoknapatawpha fictions, the women who wash clothes are always Negroes. (In the revised version of the story that Faulkner published in Go Down, Moses, this aunt is the daughter of James Beauchamp, and so, like Ike, a member of the McCaslin-Beauchamp-Edmonds family. We have a separate entry for her as a Beauchamp in the database.)