The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
"The Optimist's Daughter" is a novel by Eudora Welty that delves into themes of family, memory, and loss against the backdrop of a father’s impending death. Set in New Orleans, it follows the narrative of Laurel McKelva, whose father, Judge Clinton McKelva, is hospitalized due to a detached retina and shows little desire to live. The story highlights the dynamics between Laurel, her father’s second wife, Fay, and the emotional complexities that arise as they navigate his illness and eventual death. Following the judge's passing, the characters confront the intricacies of their relationships during the funeral proceedings in their hometown of Mount Salus, Mississippi.
As Laurel reflects on her past and her mother’s legacy while dealing with Fay’s self-centered behavior, the novel explores notions of memory and the impact of familial ties. The narrative also intertwines symbolism, such as birds representing both freedom and confinement, illustrating Laurel's struggle with her heritage and identity. Ultimately, "The Optimist's Daughter" is a poignant exploration of how individuals cope with grief and the reconciliation of their memories with the realities of loss. The story invites readers to consider the layers of their own familial connections and the ways in which they navigate the complexities of love and memory.
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The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
First published: 1972
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: March and April, late 1950’s or early 1960’s
Locale: New Orleans, Louisiana; Mississippi
Principal characters
Laurel McKelva Hand , a fabric designerClinton McKelva , her father, a retired judgeBecky Thurston McKelva , her motherWanda Fay McKelva , the judge’s second wifeThe Chisom family , Fay’s family from Texas and MississippiDr. Nate Courtland , an eye specialistAdele Courtland , his sister, a first-grade teacher
The Story:
In New Orleans, Judge Clinton McKelva is diagnosed with a detached retina. As his second wife, Wanda Fay, along with his daughter Laurel and a night nurse, take shifts sitting with him in his hospital room, he gives no sign of wanting to live. He only lies still, on Dr. Nate Courtland’s orders, concentrating, it seems, only on the passing of time. His double room eventually gets a new patient, Mr. Dalzell, a fellow Mississippian who has cancer. Mr. Dalzell is unaware of his surroundings and thinks the judge is his estranged son.
At night, Laurel inexplicably returns to the hospital, hours after her own shift there, to find a nurse pulling Fay out of the judge’s room, irate that Fay has tried to urge the judge from bed so they could celebrate her birthday and Mardi Gras. In the waiting room, members of the Dalzell family attempt to calm Fay, outraged at the nurse’s treatment of her—typically concentrating on herself rather than on the impending death of the judge. He dies minutes after Fay’s attempt to move him. The next afternoon, Laurel and Fay take the train to Mount Salus, Mississippi, with the judge’s body on board.
In the evening, the judge’s body is brought home; his funeral is set for the next day, and his body is viewed in the family home beforehand. Friends of the judge have organized a dinner for both days in his honor. Fay objects to people taking over her home. The Chisoms, Fay’s family, arrive and prove outspoken and vulgar to most of Laurel’s friends and to her parents. After the burial of the judge in the newest part of the cemetery, near the highway and not in the plot with his first wife, Becky, Fay decides to return for a few days to Texas with her family.
Laurel spends the weekend in her family home. Saturday afternoon she tends her mother’s garden while four of her mother’s old friends gossip mainly about Fay and her relationship with the judge. That evening, Laurel, alone, goes through her father’s library, finding no trace of his life with her mother, only his books and papers and some drops of nail polish on his desk, presumably traces of his life with Fay. Laurel removes each drop. Sunday evening, Laurel spends time with her old friends, her six bridesmaids, in Mount Salus; they reminisce about Laurel’s extravagant wartime wedding and about her parents.
Laurel returns home and notices that a bird, a chimney swift, is trapped in the house. She closes herself off in her parents’ bedroom, now ostentatiously redecorated by Fay. The remainder of the night, with the backdrop of a storm outside and the sounds of a bird flying within, Laurel thinks of the past. She enters the sewing room, a small room off the master bedroom where Laurel slept as an infant. Her mother’s desk, unlike that of the judge, is filled with papers, including personal letters—those from the judge and from her own mother in West Virginia. Laurel’s mind takes her from her earliest memories of visiting West Virginia to her mother’s life, marriage, and five-year illness and death. The memories soften what had seemed to be a personality ruled by practicality and restraint. Laurel cries with her head on her mother’s desk. She imagines her former husband, Phil, crying out that he wants back the life that had been cut short by war. She wonders what their marriage would have been like had he lived.
On Monday morning, when she awakens, Laurel recalls her dream of traveling with Phil from Chicago to Mount Salus for their wedding. On the train they had sighted birds flying in the V pattern and saw the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers converging, both images symbolizing their own union.
Laurel next has to deal with the bird in the house. Mr. Cheek arrives, looking for odd jobs, but he proves useless in ridding the house of the bird. Missouri, a longtime housekeeper, first for the judge and Becky and then for the judge and Fay, arrives at the house, too. Laurel catches the bird between two baskets and frees it outside. Missouri then takes down the curtains to be cleaned; the bird had soiled them.
Laurel burns the papers and letters she found in her mother’s desk, keeping only one token, a rock, carved with the judge’s initials, given to Becky when they were courting. Laurel offers the keepsake to Adele Courtland, the eye doctor’s sister, who presumably had loved the judge. Adele refuses it, saying Laurel must keep it.
Fay arrives home just before Laurel leaves, and what has been a cold and distant relationship between the two turns into an argument: Laurel’s dislike of Fay and of her taking the place of her mother becomes clear; Fay replies that, nonetheless, the house is now hers. Laurel briefly considers taking with her a breadboard Phil had made for Becky, but decides that she needs nothing physical to hold on to the past; she needs no material reminders, as her memory and dreams have freshened her heart and provided a path forward. Adele and her first-grade students wave good-bye to Laurel as she rides by the school with her six bridesmaids on the way to the airport.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Eudora Welty. Updated ed. New York: Chelsea House, 2007. A collection of essays analyzing Welty’s work, including discussions of The Optimist’s Daughter. Includes essays by American writer and literary critic Robert Penn Warren and British writer Elizabeth Bowen.
Gretlund, Jan Nordby, and Karl-Heinz Westarp, eds. The Late Novels of Eudora Welty. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. Two introductory and two concluding essays frame four essays on The Optimist’s Daughter. Also discusses Welty as a significant novelist.
Kreyling, Michael. Understanding Eudora Welty. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Chapter 9 links The Optimist’s Daughter with Welty’s autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, suggesting that the key to Welty’s art may lie in understanding mother-daughter relationships. Part of the Understanding Contemporary American Literature series, intended for students and general readers.
Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty: A Biography. New York: Harcourt, 2005. An authorized biography, written by an academic and a friend of Welty. Concentrates on the inner life of the writer. Stresses the importance of family, friendships, and writing to her life. Includes many excerpts from Welty’s letters.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. One Writer’s Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. Discusses how Welty transforms factual material into her fiction. Chapter 9 traces the development of the protagonist in The Optimist’s Daughter from the first published version that appeared as a story in The New Yorker to its final version as a novel. Also discusses how the novel treats the changing American South and race.
Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman, ed. More Conversations with Eudora Welty. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. This collection features twenty-six interviews with Welty, who discusses her life and works. Contains an editor’s introduction, a chronology, and an index.
Vande Kieft, Ruth M. Eudora Welty. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1987. Chapter 10 provides an extensive plot summary of The Optimist’s Daughter, with an explication and many direct quotations from the novel. A significantly updated version of the original 1962 edition.
Welty, Eudora. Welty: Stories, Essays, and Memoir. New York: Library of America, 1998. In this collection of writings, including her memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings (1984), Welty looks at the early influences that shaped her as a writer. Provides insight into autobiographical material that was reshaped for The Optimist’s Daughter and into the novel’s themes of creativity, memory, family relationships, love, and mortality.