‘The waiting arms of Missouri’: human connections and sheltered lives in Eudora...

• Author(s): Alves, Isabel Maria Fernandes
• Date: 2013
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/10048
• Origin: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa
• Subject(s): Welty, Eudora, 1909-2001; The Optimist's Daughter; Missouri; Racial South; Nature; Imagination
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

This paper reads The Optimist’s Daughter based on the symbolic, silent, and scarce presence of Missouri, the black housekeeper of the Mckelva’s house. On the one hand, her presence in the novel is rare and subsidiary; on the other hand, her presence signals Laurel’s sheltered life and her need for human connections, showing,as Peggy Prenshaw suggests, that Welty truly believes in “the human connection between freely operating individuals who engage issues that directly affect their lives”. Attuned to the political and social codes of the racial South, the embraces between Laurel and Missouri are silent, but they are also a reinforcement of what Prenshaw designates as the “respectful listening to the position of the other”. Besides, this paper underlines the connection between Missouri and the birds, an association which corroborates Welty’s predisposition to listen to the voice of Nature. In the novel, the birds’ journeys intensify and anticipate the imminent flight Laurel is to take into another life, that of imagination and artistic independence. Their presence may also indicate Welty’s intuition of a collective and racially-based desire for flight and freedom.