Eunice 2

Eunice appears in the novel only as a name in the McCaslin plantation ledgers, but behind those entries is the terrible story that much of Go Down, Moses is organized around. Eunice was bought by Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin in New Orleans in 1807 for $650. Although she is never physically described, our decision to identify her race as 'Mixed' rather than 'Black' is based on the extravagant amount of money Old Carothers paid for her on the New Orleans slave market, which is associated elsewhere in Faulkner with the sale of quadroons as concubines to wealthy white men. She is already pregnant with Carothers McCaslin's child when he marries her to Thucydus, another slave on the McCaslin plantation. She drowns herself on Christmas day, 1832, almost certainly after learning of her daughter Tomasina's pregnancy.