Eudora Welty's Mothers and Daughters by Helen R. McLane A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Humanities in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida April 1989 Eudora Welty's Mothers and Daughters by Helen R. McLane This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Ann Peyton, Department of English. It was submitted to the faculty of the College of Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. As-s±stant D n, College of Humanities Chair erson, Department of English Dea~ ge ~f li::::rtf. J'AJ Date I ii ABSTRACT Author: Helen R. McLane Title: Eudora Welty's Mothers and Daughters Institution: Florida Atlantic University Degree: Master of Arts Year: 1989 In Eudora Welty's works, the importance of the mother- daughter relationship lies in its ability to expand the reader's understanding of the individual's search for enlightenment. As a wanderer acts and reacts to people and events, she is most often influenced by her mother, or mother-like figures, and other pairs around her. Welty's bonded women represent the historical, religious, psychological, and sociological studies of this interwoven human relationship; her characters are subtly crafted to develop a myriad of close and, at the same time, distant bonds. Welty emphasizes the mothers and daughters of Losing Battles, Delta Wedding, and The Optimist's Daughter though Virgie of The Golden Apples represents the strongest point for the conclusion that the mother-daughter relationship supports and enhances Welty's works. iii Table of Contents Chapter I Introduction . 1 Chapter II The Mother-Daughter Relationship: A Support for The Golden Apples . 4 Chapter III Mothers and Daughters: Those Around Virgie . 16 Chapter IV Virgie Rainey: The Need for Her Mother . 38 Chapter V Conclusion . • • • • • • 48 Works Cited . • . .50 iv CHAPTER I Introduction This essay is a study of three stories from Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples: "The Shower of Gold," "June Recital," and "The Wanderers." The strongest connecting link of the stories is Virgie Rainey because, as Ruth M. Vande Kieft describes her, she is the "most perceptive and emotionally mature of the wanderers" (Eudora Welty 138). She brings readers back to The Golden Apples. She demands attention. She is the heart of the work. Like the human body, The Golden Apples is supported by the mother-daughter attracting-opposing bond, a skeletal system. The work functions by the strength of its individual mothers and daughters, a muscular system. It flourishes with the energy of Virgie Rainey, its heart. And like The Golden Apples, Virgie is supported by her mothers who emphasize the mother-daughter relationship. Consequently, this essay looks separately at the mother-daughter relationship, the mothers and daughters of the work, and Virgie as influenced by relationships and individuals. 1 2 The beauty of Virgie is that she progresses not alone but with assistance. The wonderful, mysterious, contra­ dictory mother-daughter relationships tie Virgie to her mother Katie and also to her teacher Miss Eckhart. But Welty does not simply present two pairs, she surrounds and mingles them with others who accent the struggles, the confusions, the disasters, and the successes. Mothers and daughters form an interlocking system that enhances Virgie and controls The Golden Apples. Within the work, Welty develops a life in progressing, changing stages. The life is Virgie's. As seen in the three stories, the three moments of her life resemble the cycle of nature. The strong mother-daughter bond represents the cycle, which in turn, allows Virgie's stories to become support for the whole of The Golden Apples. The collection of stories, thus, is Virgie's life in three moments. Outside these stories, Welty creates momentary pieces of characters' lives in Losing Battles, Delta Wedding, and The Optimist's Daughter. When looking at Welty's mothers and daughters, how can one exclude Ellen Fairchild, Gloria Renfro, and Laurel McKelva? Though these characters are placed in differently constructed relationships from Virgie's, they support the attachments and rebellions that unite and repel mothers and daughters. Welty's multiplicity emphasizes the importance of this often over-looked bond: it is "the artist's obligation, not to be 3 overwhelmed by the world, but to include its disparities" (Fialkowski 66). However, none of the pairs illustrate better this "emotionally close and emotionally distant" bond than Virgie Rainey and her mothers. Critical works outside of literary studies support this connection. For example, Lucy Rose Fischer explains that the purpose for her own sociological study of mothers and daughters is to "understand the meaning of this apparent contradiction" (8). This paper highlights Welty's fictional characters who mimic this phenomenon of human life: Virgie embodies this duality. Whether she holds herself back or is held back by others to absorb experiences, she manifests Welty's encompassing theme: the individual's search and discovery of herself and her place in the world. CHAPTER II The Mother-Daughter Relationship: A Support for The Golden Apples and Beyond Why does Eudora Welty not emphasize the father-son relationship in The Golden Apples? Though she includes the interesting grouping of King MacLain and his twin sons Eugene and Ran, their ties link more at a distance than intimately. Therefore, Welty chooses mothers and daughters because of their endless cyclical nature and their nurtur­ ing qualities. Carol Pearson describes the heroic quest by gender: "Women seem to linger in the stages that empha­ size affiliation . and men in those that emphasize separateness and opposition" (7). The Golden Apples is a collection of stories that expresses one main character's attempt to mature and continue her search with aid from her mother, the lessons from her teacher, and the interrelated actions of other mothers and daughters around her. This miraculous character is Virgie Rainey. And she is made female for a designed purpose. Welty employs the feminine 4 5 because, as Carol P. Christ emphasizes, "Women's stories had not been told. And without stories there is no articulation of experience" (Diving Deep 1); "Woman's quest seeks a wholeness that unites the dualisms of spirit and body, rational and irrational, nature and freedom, spiritual and social, life and death" (9). Welty chooses the searcher and her search for The Golden Apples. By creating a girl who develops into a woman who appears an accomplished yet still struggling wanderer, Welty tells her readers that women can achieve high levels of mental awareness in similar ways to men yet remain unique. Instead of allowing readers to assume her characters have qualities that apply to both sexes, Welty creates females who emphasize the point themselves. However, in The Golden Apples the search for self is taking place aided and hindered by relationships. Welty crafts these relationships to support and debilitate women more so than men. Undoubtedly, she does not mean to imply that one gender is superior to the other. In emphasizing women, she justifies Nancy Chodorow's claim that "women's mothering has been taken for granted" (3). Welty uses mothers and daughters over fathers and sons for four reasons. First, Welty dramatizes the fact that "the father is rarely a child's primary parent" (Chodorow 3). No one disputes this claim. The woman bears, nurtures, rears, and 6 disciplines her young children. Since the father participates little, "the woman is the natural nourishing principle," becoming the strongest early connection the child makes (Neumann 283). Virgie's father is seldom mentioned, so that the mother-daughter relationship becomes her foundation. Second, this early tie is never forgotten. The searcher looking for herself is often led to or finds her own way back to her mother. To understand herself, to understand existence, the wanderer seeks the time before confusions and frustrations. This goal corresponds to the child's time before birth and to the comforting early days in her mother's arms. The woman as mother is the "quintessential accommodator," forsaking herself for others; yet as "conflict is a necessity," the child must separate to be on her own (Miller 125). She returns to fill necessary fragments for her understanding. Though stepping backward, returning to the mother is often the path to selfhood. Welty uses female characters because "men cannot provide the kind of return to oneness that women can" (Chodorow 194). The spiritual importance of the feminine was expressed in the duties early people gave to their women--caring for children, tending small animals, and farming--which elevated these activities beyond everyday "into the mysteries of preservation, formation, nourishment, and 7 transformation" (Neumann 282). Largely, ignorance of human procreation added to the mysteries, and women were revered for giving life (Stone notes anthropologists 125). Women transformed "nature into a higher, spiritual principle" (Neumann 286). Erich Neumann describes the mother and daughter of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the power that the people saw in the cyclical relationship. Edith Hamilton also describes the importance of Demeter and Persephone (over the Olympians), not simply because of their link to the earth and crops: "In their hour of grief, men could turn for compassion to the goddess who sorrowed and the goddess who died" (54). Through this historical, religious understanding of the power of the female body and spirit, readers can accept women as a means of returning to or of finding oneness. However, women no longer have the mystical power they once had, so that now Welty relies on the mystical inner qualities of the human consciousness. Men and women, therefore, should have similar abilities or chances for success.