Philadelphy

Character Key: 
Display Name: 
Philadelphy
Sort Name: 
Philadelphy
AKA: 
Philadelphia
Race: 
Black
Gender: 
Female
Class: 
Enslaved Black
Rank: 
Minor
Vitality: 
Alive
Family: 
Strother
Family (new): 
Biography: 

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).

Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/9918