Molly Beauchamp

Both the essentially comic character of "Molly" who appeared in "A Point of Law" and "Gold Is Not Always" and the very poignant "Molly" who appeared in "Go Down, Moses" are present in the novel Go Down, Moses. The daughter of slaves who belonged to the Worsham family, she grew up with Miss Worsham in Jefferson but moved to the McCaslin-Edmonds plantation when she married Lucas Beauchamp. She is described as "a small woman, almost tiny," wearing a "clean white headcloth and apron" (97), and in new material written for the novel is the 'mammy' of Roth Edmonds - both that costume and that role are culturally familiar for the population of Yoknapatawpha. But the novel also gives her a standing unlike anyone else's in the canon when Faulkner dedicates the book to his own "Mammy," Caroline Barr, and then uses the wording of the Dedication inside the text of the novel to describe Molly Beauchamp (113).