Robin told me shortly he was sorry he had put himself about, turned his back upon me without a sign of salutation, and as he went towards the door, I could hear him telling Duncan that I was "only some
kinless loon that didn't know his own father." Angry as I was at these words, and ashamed of my own ignorance, I could scarce keep from smiling that a man who was under the lash of the law (and was indeed hanged some three years later) should be so nice as to the descent of his acquaintances.
It began with a
kinless boy turned loose in Texas, and went on fantastically through a hundred changes and chops of life, the scenes shifting from State after Western State, from cities that sprang up in a month and in a season utterly withered away, to wild ventures in wilder camps that are now laborious, paved municipalities.
In the first two chapters, the author provides a clear overview of how the recently enacted Civil Code (1857) restricted the traditional colonial rights of illegitimate children to file paternity suits, increasing the numbers of
kinless people, and leaving many unmarried women unprotected.
"And although the Chinese was definitely a colored man even if not a Negro, he was only he, single peculiar and barren; not just
kinless but even kindless, half the world or anyway half the continent (we all knew about San Francisco's Chinatown) sundered from his like and therefore as threatless as a mule." Faulkner might in fact be describing his perception of Oxford's lone Chinese laundryman, bound by class and face into his isolation.
Children from working, middle, and upper class families would be placed in their respective class positions based on filial ties; illegitimate children would consequently find themselves as part of a
kinless underclass.