Issetibbeha's Mother

The "young woman" whom Doom seduces in New Orleans is first described as the "daughter of a fairly well-to-do West Indian family" (318). She is mainly white, but when her son Issetibbeha remembers her a few pages later, the narrative explicitly refers to "her Negro blood" (321). Given the casualness of the later reference, Faulkner might have expected his readers to read the designation "West Indian" as code for racial mixing in the first description, though that's by no means certain. "Six months" after Doom leaves her in New Orleans, and pregnant with Doom's child (318), this unnamed "city woman" follows him to the Indian plantation in Yoknapatawpha, where they marry (321).