Unnamed Compson Slaves

While chasing his niece across the Yoknapatawpha countryside Jason thinks about the "slaves" that "my people" used to own; in his mind slave-owning is a source of pride, a symbol of the Compsons' high social standing (239). The novel says almost nothing about these people, but when Versh - one of the Compsons' servants and, as Dilsey's son, descended from the men and women who had been enslaved forty years earlier - tells Benjy a story about changing names, he mentions one male Compson slave who "turned preacher" after his name was changed, the "family woman" who looked at this man, and the "chillen" who were born into slavery (69). The entire passage is difficult to understand, but the reference to "family woman" is especially vague. It may just mean a pregnant woman (or perhaps more than one) who has a number of children, or it may imply that a specific enslaved woman (or again, perhaps more than one) was specifically used to breed more slaves.