READING THE CONSTELLATION: EUOORA WELTY'S PATTERNS OF TIME, CULTURE, AND MEMORY by BARBARA J. SYLVESTER B.A., Florence State College, 1959 M.A., Kent State University, 1960 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHIILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September 1997 ©Barbara J. Sylvester, 1997 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of ^s^L^A/«9 h The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date VbeCje^Ln^ /£. A?<? 7 DE-6 (2/88) ABSTRACT Eudora Welty's full stature in world literature is not clear because her canon has not yet been seen as unified by an advertent thematic structure. This oversight stems in part from the fact that critics, seeing her regional detail as an end rather than a means, neglected Lewis Simpson's insistence that Welty is a modernist writer working, like Faulkner, in the tradition of Proust, Joyce, and Eliot. By applying a modernist paradigm to several major volumes of her fiction, I have traced consistent, discernible patterns that can be communicated in classrooms as well as in scholarly discussions. Welty focuses primarily on major transitional eras in national history that particularly illustrate the inevitable disintegration of familiar cultures. Partly by employing Bakhtin's concept of chronotopes, I show that each era she portrays is systematically intersected by parallel cultures of other eras and locales, evoked by allusions to masterpieces of past art works, to historical similarities, and to myths that gave meaning to human life in times of shared belief. The juxtapositions of different cultures comment on a crucial, universal challenge for all humans: to accept time's mutability without evasion or retreat. The fragments of art form a unifying collage, reminding readers of art's importance in sustaining human life by providing codes for emotional and spiritual survival of change. Welty's final work affirms that humanity can put the details of temporal ii existence into an emotionally liberating perspective by recognizing the constant and reassuring cyclic patterns of the natural world, for these patterns can be held in memory and preserved in art. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iv Acknowledgements vi Abbreviations for Welty's Texts vii INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter 1 Shaping a Career 2 3 Photographing Parts of the Whole 26 Framing Reality in A Curtain of Green 32 Following After: Sojourners and Wayfarers 35 Gathering Home 37 Wandering: 3 8 "The Wanderers" 42 "The Bride of the Innisfallen" 50 Chapter 2 The Robber Bridegroom: Miraculous Adventure Time 58 The Frame Tale Meeting: Intersection of Different Worlds 65 Clement: The Innocent 69 Mike Fink: Folk Hero 73 Lockhart and Rosamond: Chivalric Romance 78 Mike Fink: Mail-Rider 85 Salome and the Sun God: Cultural Parallels 88 Clement: Reality and Reaction 94 Chapter 3 The Wide Net: Adventure Time on the Road 99 "First Love" 105 "A Still Moment" 116 "Asphodel" 125 "At the Landing" 13 3 Chapter 4 Delta Wedding: "Deadening" Time 146 Shellmound 151 Marmion 155 Point of View and Observers 158 Plot—An Aspect of the Novel 162 iv The Yellow Dog and the Blues 166 Patterns of Music 171 The Throb of the Compress 172 The Tinkle of the Piano, The Scratch of the Victrola 174 The Mournful Airs of Scotland 178 Observations 181 Chapter 5 Losing Battles: Ceremonial Center Time 18 6 The Yeoman Farmers of the Tennessee Hills 195 The Family—Jordan/Vaughn/Beecham/ Renfro 197 The Battles 2 01 Battle Already Lost: Agriculture to Commerce-Law 202 Battle Already Lost: Agriculture to Commerce—Education 206 Battle Almost Lost: The Old Religion to the New World—The Handwriting on the Wall 2 08 Battles in Progress 215 Granny Vaughn and Lady May Renfro: Past Versus Future 216 Miss Buelah and Lexie Renfro: Fire and Ice 217 Jack and Vaughn: Action Versus Reflection 219 One Battle Won—Bridging the Gaps 228 Losing and Surviving 233 Chapter 6 The Optimist's Daughter: Centrifugal Time, Solar-Lunar Time 238 A Trio of Protectors 245 Hand 253 Clock-Calendar Time Vs. Solar-Lunar Time 2 60 Wilder 275 Afterword 281 Works Cited 286 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My initial thanks must go to the late Professor Cleanth Brooks and to Professor Lee Greene who reintroduced me to the work of Eudora Welty at an NEH Summer Seminar in 1989. Their discussion of The Golden Apples, along with the enthusiastic comments of my colleagues in Professor Greene's study group, inspired me to attempt this study. At the University of British Columbia, I have been fortunate to have the guidance of Professor P. Merivale, without whose generous instruction and discipline the present study might not have been written. I am grateful, as well, to Professors Ross Labrie and Michael Zeitlin for their patience and acumen in helping me shape this study. Professor B. L Grenberg's earlier assistance and wise counsel is also appreciated. Thanks are due as well to colleagues at Western Washington University. Provost Larry De Lorme, Dean Peter Elich, and Vice-Provost Ken Symes have provided professional assistance. My colleagues, Roberta Buck, Carmen Werder, and Lynne Masland, have been constant in their support of my efforts. I am indebted also to Professor L. L. Lee for generous discussions of related critical issues. My greatest appreciation is due my family. Both my mother, Mildred Brown, and my son, John Sylvester, have fortified me with cheerful and encouraging words. My husband, Bickford Sylvester, has been a professional and personal model of "grace under pressure," for whose support I am deeply grateful. vi ABBREVIATIONS BI The Bride of the Innisfallen (1955) CS The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1980) DW Delta Wedding (1946) Eye The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews (1978) GA The Golden Apples (1949) LB Losing Battles (1970) PH The Ponder Heart (1954) OD The Optimist's Daughter (1972) OTOP One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression (1973) OWB One Writer's Beginnings (1984) RB The Robber Bridegroom (1942) WN The Wide Net (1943) vii 1 INTRODUCTION A decade after Eudora Welty published her last fictional work in 1972, Albert J. Devlin remarked that critics, bemused by Welty's lyrical artistry, had yet to examine her work with the "informed historical and cultural scrutiny (in Louis D. Rubin's phrase)" necessary to penetrate her mystery and thereby "establish a full circulation of meaning among her memorable texts" (Chronicle "Introduction" xi). A few years later Peggy W. Prenshaw repeated Devlin's assessment: "more attention to the relation between works and to the career as a whole is needed. the fiction of Eudora Welty has not yet received the scale and depth of critical analysis that it warrants" ("Eudora Welty" Bibliographic Essays 2 67). Too many critics have heeded the caveat early expressed by Ruth Vande Kieft, author of the standard work on Welty's life and canon, that Welty's work did not lend itself to exhaustive analysis. Rather, she explained, beyond a certain point, the sense of mystery so fundamental to Welty's fiction must remain just that—a mystery, one that elicits powerful emotional responses from readers, but leaves them uncertain of the meaning of the work itself. As late as 1987, Vande Kieft advised readers to content themselves by "running with the mysteries in parallel relationship to the stories" ("Teaching" 204). Over this last decade, Welty criticism has proliferated. Also, Michael Kreyling's 1991 Author and Agent, an account of 2 Welty's correspondence and relationship with her literary agent, Diarmuid Russell, has provided more details about Welty's work habits and travels. Yet, no single study has offered a satisfying account of either the connections among Welty's texts or the relationship between her works and her career. Eudora Welty herself has insisted repeatedly that readers must look in the expanse of her entire work to comprehend this whole, to understand her vision: "it's what the work shows, comprises altogether" (Price "Introduction" xxviii, emphasis mine). As Jon Smith asserts, in a provocative 1995 review of eight new books on Eudora Welty, "Welty studies continue only to scratch the surface" (554) . While I do not presume in this study to explain the mystery of Eudora Welty's unique genius, I do intend to suggest a key to her method of constructing narratives, which is highly conscious and purposeful. This key should help dispel the assumption that Welty's canon reflects no conscious thematic structure, an assumption that has retarded the recognition of Welty's significance in modern literature. The central critical problem, as Smith claims, is that Welty has not been consistently recognized as a "major modernist" writer.1 This oversight has Chester Eisinger sees Welty as a transition figure between traditionalism and modernism; Michael Kreyling notes the modern dimensions of the early stories ("Modernism") and pursues the mythological patterns of Welty's later work in his Achievement of Order. Most recently, Rebecca Mark claims that Welty revises the modernist tradition from a feminist perspective, while Suzan Harrison, tracing the interrelation of Welty's novels and Virginia Woolf's, places Welty in the tradition of modernism.