Philadelphy

Philadelphy is a slave. When she marries Loosh she becomes part of the family of slaves that serve the Sartoris family as 'house slaves.' Presumably she is a maid, though the novel does not show her at work. Her essential role is to try to keep Loosh from expressing and then acting on his longing for freedom. When he decides to go off in the wake of the Union army, she tells Rosa Millard three times that "I tried to stop him," but explains her decision to leave with him by adding "But he my husband" (74-75). She never reappears, not even when Loosh is back at Sartoris at the end of the novel. But in the chapter called "Raid" her name plays a significant role in the narrative when Yankee soldiers mistake it for the name of a town in Mississippi (Philadelphia).