With the esc-face.1 below,

    (woman-find-file "esc-face.1")

produces

     bold \ backslash

with the "\" not in bold, where I expected it would be (man-db+groff
makes it bold).

I think woman.el.esc-face.diff below could correct this.

2012-05-24  Kevin Ryde  <user42@zip.com.au>

	* woman.el (woman-decode-region): Replace escaped-escapes using
	`subst-char-in-region' so bold or underline on \e is preserved.


I struck this in some perl pod2man output.  It uses \e for backslashes
in "verbatim" output paragraphs (bits of sample code usually).  Those
parts are in ".ft CW" font, which comes out of woman.el as woman-unknown
face (which is red).  But the face wasn't on the backslashes.