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ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106 18 BEDFORD ROW, LONDON WC1R 4EJ, ENGLAND 8021780 OWENS, PHILLIP LAMAR TIME IN THE NOVELS OF EUDORA WELTY The University ofNorth Carolina at Greensboro PH.D. 1980 University Microfilms International 300 N.Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 18 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4EJ, England Copyright 1980 by Owens, Phillip Lamar All Rights Reserved TIME IN THE NOVELS OF EUDORA WELTY by • Phillip Lamar Owens A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 1980 Approved by C. Su—^ Dissertation Adviser APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dissertation « « ^ Adviser ^^ Committee Members Q/ftyjL4J> ^JaiJT A Y1 • Dace of Acceptance by Committee Date of Final Oral Examination 11 ABSTRACT OWENS, PHILLIP LAMAR. Time in the Novels of Eudora Welty. (1980) Directed by: Dr. Charles E. Davis. Pp. 225 In her essays and stories, and particularly in her novels, Eudora Welty examines how human beings relate to time. Miss Welty's concern with time is reflected in the imagery, structure, and theme of her novels, and indeed should be viewed as crucial to her artistic vision. To Miss Welty, time is quite different from chronology—man's rather futile attempts to measure and control time. Although her novels are filled with references to clocks, watches, pendulums, and other such devices, Welty always endeavors to demonstrate the inaccuracy and perversity of these contrivances. She portrays time as often dilated or compressed, and she regards the past, present, and future as one continuous flux. Her characters, however, usually fragment time and become preoccupied with the past, or with the present, or with the future. Consequently, Welty's characters seldom live in harmony with the world around them. Because human beings cannot, or will not, reconcile their subjective conceptions of chronology with the external flow of time, they tend to perceive time as their enemy. Hence, Lorenzo Dow in "A Still Moment" blames time for what he calls Separateness, the isolation of one person from another and from the rest of the world. Other characters, like Clement Musgrove in The Robber Bridegroom, rant at time because it accentuates human transience and mortality; still others, like most of the Fairchilds in Delta Wedding, lament the passing away of a golden era of innocence and abundance. Indeed, Miss Welty frequently depicts her characters as being at war with time, a metaphor which culminates in Losing Battles. Generally, these characters separate into three categories according to the tactics they employ against time. The largest group retreat, either by withdrawing into the past—as do the older Fairchilds in Delta Wedding and Granny Beecham in Losing Battles—or by isolating themselves in the present. Many of these characters, like Edna Earle Ponder in The Ponder Heart and Katie Rainey in The Golden Apples, erect a ceaseless wall of chatter to protect their fragile illusion that time can be stopped or controlled. A second group of characters, including King MacLain in The Golden Apples and Becky Thurston McKelva in The Optimist1s Daughter, struggle valiantly but unsuccessfully against time. These combatants "butt their heads against the wall" only to become even more isolated from the world around them. Their frustration eventually changes to cynicism, and they remain casualties in a battle they had instigated. A third group, however, learn to compromise with time and to accept its passing. George Fairchild in Delta Wedding and Jack Renfro in Losing Battles, for example, no longer struggle against time. Of all Welty's characters, though, Laurel McKelva Hand in The Optimist's Daughter is best able to understand the vicissitudes of time. Laurel discovers, during a long night of introspection, that time is an enemy only if she believes it to be. Thus she confronts her opponent and transforms it into an ally. Eudora Welty would seem to recommend Laurel's response to time as the most tenable strategy in a world that is, at best, perplexing. Although the author sympathizes with her characters, she does not hesitate to laugh at their petty efforts to defy time. In the final analysis, Welty seems to feel, mankind takes all its struggles too seriously. A better way might be to laugh at the human predicament, and, with laughter, rejoin the universal design. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I express my deep appreciation to Dr. James Evans, Dr. Robert Kelly, Dr. Randolph Bulgin, and Dr. Richard Bardolph for their guidance with this dissertation. I especially thank my adviser, Dr. Charles Davis, for his advice, encouragement, and patience. I dedicate this work to my wife, June, who understood. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page APPROVAL PAGE ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES V CHAPTER I. PLACE AND TIME: THE COORDINATES OF WELTY'S FICTION 1 II. THE FALL INTO TIME: THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 25 III. CHERISHING THE GOLDEN TIME: DELTA WEDDING 57 IV. TIME WARPS IN THE GOLDEN APPLES 91 V. THE ATTRITION OF TIME: THE PONDER HEART . 126 VI. STRATAGEMS AGAINST TIME: LOSING BATTLES . 145 VII. A RAGE AGAINST TIME: THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER 173 VIII. A TIME TO LOVE 200 ENDNOTES 208 BIBLIOGRAPHY 219 iv LIST OF TABLES TABLE Page 1. Genealogy of the Fairchild Family 90 2. Chronology for The Golden Apples 124 3. Time References in The Optimist's Daughter . 198 v 1 CHAPTER I PLACE AND TIME: THE COORDINATES OF WELTY'S FICTION E.udora Welty has repeatedly emphasized the special role that locale performs in her art. In "Place In Fiction," for example, Miss Welty describes a sense of place as the primary agent of "goodness" in fiction: First, with the goodness—validity—in the raw material of writing. Second, with the goodness in the writing itself—the achieved world of appearance, through which the novelist has his whole say .... Third, with the goodness—the worth—in the writer himself: place is where he sees his roots, place is where he stands; in his experience out of which he writes it provides the base of reference, in his work the point of view. To Miss Welty, then, "fiction is all bound up in the local"' because "feelings are bound up in place," and she compares the writer to an explorer who charts out a "tentative map of the known world." The writer utilizes as the chief coordinate of the fictional grid, then, Place: what Welty defines as the "named, identified, concrete, exact and exacting, and therefore credible, gathering spot of all that has been felt, is about to be experienced, in the novel's progress." 2 Although many critics have recognized the significance of Place in Miss Welty's fiction, very few have noticed the degree in which Time suffuses her artistic theory and the 2 fiction itself. In the passage just quoted, for example, Welty stresses that Place is concrete and credible because it becomes a touchstone for all of the experiences of the past, present, and future. Without the passage of Time, Place remains like an undeveloped piece of film—unresponsive to the writer's creative talents. With Time as a catalyst, though, Place develops into "a picture of what man has done and imagined, it is his visible past, result." Hence, in "How I Write" Welty admits that, although she is "touched off by place," it is Place modified by Time—"according to present mood, intensification of feeling, beat of memory, accretion of idea"—which stirs her to complete her journey 3 into imaginative realms. If Place is the first coordinate of Miss Welty's fiction, then, Time marks a second coordinate—one which both limits the focus of her fictional world and expands her explorations into hitherto uncharted regions of human endeavor.