Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty

First published: 1946

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Regional

Time of plot: Early 1920’s

Locale: Mississippi

Principal characters

• Laura McRaven, a cousin to the Fairchilds
• Dabney Fairchild, a bride-to-be
• Ellen, her mother
• Battle, her father
• Shelley, her sister
• George Fairchild, her uncle
• Robbie, George’s wife
• Troy Flavin, a plantation manager

The Story:

Nine-year-old Laura McRaven makes her first journey alone from Jackson to the Delta to visit her dead mother’s people, the Fairchilds. One of her cousins, Dabney Fairchild, is to be married, and Laura’s chief regret is that she cannot be in the wedding party because of her mother’s recent death. She remembers Shellmound, the Fairchild plantation, and knows that she will have a wonderful time with her exciting cousins and aunts. The Fairchilds are people to whom things happen, exciting, unforgettable things.

At Shellmound, Laura finds most of the family assembled for the wedding. Although children her age are her companions, she is also aware of the doings of the grownups. It is obvious that the family is not happy about Dabney’s marriage. Her husband-to-be is Troy Flavin, the manager of the plantation, whose inferior social position is the main mark against him. Uncle Battle, Dabney’s father, is most of all reluctant to let one of his family go from him, but he cannot bring himself to say anything to Dabney, not even that he will miss her. Laura finds this behavior to be very strange. They seldom talk as a united family, but they always act as one. There are so many members of the family that it is hard for Laura to keep them straight. Uncle Battle’s wife is Aunt Ellen, and their oldest daughter is Shelley, who is going to be a nun. Again the whole family disapproves of her plan, but there is seldom any attempt to get her to change her mind. The obvious favorite is Uncle George, Battle’s brother. Uncle George also married beneath him. He and his wife, Robbie, live in Memphis, where everyone knows poor Uncle George can never be happy.

When George arrives for the wedding festivities, he is alone and miserable. Robbie left him, and he came down alone to see his family. Not wanting to make Dabney unhappy, they do not tell her of Robbie’s desertion. The children and the aunts and grand-aunts are not told either, although one by one they begin to suspect that something is wrong. Ellen could kill Robbie for making George unhappy, but she keeps her feelings to herself except when she is alone with Battle, her husband.

Robbie’s anger at her husband began on the afternoon of a family outing. George risked his life to save one of the cousins, a feebleminded child caught in the path of a train as they crossed a railroad trestle. After that incident, Robbie was never the same with George. She seemed to want him to prove that he loves her more than he loves his family.

Probably Shelley understands the family best. She knows that they built a wall against the outside world, but she suspects that they are more lonely than self-sufficient. Most people take the family as a group, loving or hating them all together. Only Uncle George seems to take them one by one, loving and understanding each as an individual. Shelley thinks that this is why they all love Uncle George so much.

Dabney seems to wish for more than she has in her love for Troy. Sometimes she feels left out, as if she were trying to find a lighted window but finds only darkness. She loves Troy, but she wants to feel even more a part of him. She also wishes that her family will try to keep her with them; she wants to make certain of their love.

Preparations for the wedding create a flurry. The dresses were ordered from Memphis, and when some of the gowns fail to arrive, there is the usual hubbub among the women, a concern that the men cannot appreciate. One of the children falls sick at the last minute, so that Laura is made one of the wedding party after all. Troy’s mother sends some beautiful handmade quilts from her mountain shack. Troy feels proud, but the Fairchilds are even more self-consciously and unwillingly ashamed of his background.

After their wedding, Dabney and Troy will live at Marmion, an estate owned by the family. Dabney rides over to see the house. Looking at the stately buildings and the beautiful old trees, she knows that best of all she would love being inside it, looking out on the rest of the world. That is what she wants the most, to be inside where she is a part of the light and warmth. That is what marriage must give her.

All the time, unknown to any of the family but Shelley, Robbie is not far away. She is coming after George in hopes that he is looking for her. What almost defeats Robbie is the fear that she did not marry George but the whole Fairchild family. It is that fear that made her angry at the affair on the railroad trestle. Wanting desperately to come first with George, she knows instinctively that he can never set her apart or above the family. Contrite and humble, she goes to Shellmound. The fact that George is not even there at the moment hurts her even more, for she wants very much for him to be miserable without her. He is, but it is not the Fairchild way to let anyone see his true feelings.

Robbie probably understands the secret of the family when she says that the Fairchilds love each other because, in so doing, they are really loving themselves. That fact is not quite true in George’s case. He is the different one. Because of his gentleness and his ability to love people as individuals, he lets Robbie see his love for her without ever saying the words she longs to hear.

The wedding is almost an anticlimax, a calm scene following gusty storms of feeling. Troy and Dabney take only a short trip, for Troy is needed to superintend the plantation. While they are gone, Battle works the field hands hard to get Marmion ready for them. Dabney is anxious to move in, but the move is not so necessary after her marriage as it seemed before; she no longer feels left out of Troy’s life. She thinks her life before was like seeing a beautiful river between high banks, with no way to get down. Now she finds the way, and she is at peace. Indeed, the whole family seems to have righted itself.

When Aunt Ellen asks Laura to live with them at Shellmound, her being wanted by the Fairchilds seems too wonderful to believe. Laura knows that she will go back to her father, but still feeling that she really belongs to the Fairchilds seems like a beautiful dream. She clings briefly to Aunt Ellen, as if to hold close that wonderful moment of belonging.

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold, ed. Eudora Welty. Updated ed. New York: Chelsea House, 2007. Collection of essays analyzing Welty’s work, including pieces by writers Robert Penn Warren and Elizabeth Bowen. Includes discussions of Welty’s sense of place; her transformation of the public, the private, and the political; and “’The Treasure Most Dearly Regarded’: Memory and Imagination in Delta Wedding” by Welty biographer Suzanne Marrs.

Carson, Barbara Harrell. Eudora Welty: Two Pictures at Once in Her Frame. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston, 1992. Though intended for academics, Carson’s work is clearly written and generally accessible. One chapter is devoted to Delta Wedding, and the introduction sets forth her thesis that Welty’s fiction includes opposed perspectives without reconciling them. Contains an extensive bibliography and index.

Kreyling, Michael. Eudora Welty’s Achievement of Order. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. One of the best book-length studies of Welty. Focuses on the development of her fictional technique and the growth of her aesthetic sensibility and unique voice.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Understanding Eudora Welty. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Examines Welty’s work and summarizes its critical reception, including the opinions of the New Critics and feminist reviewers. Chapter 4 is devoted to an analysis of Delta Wedding.

Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty: A Biography. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2005. Literary biography provides insight into Welty’s life and writing and serves to refute some popular conceptions of the writer. Marrs, a friend of Welty, maintains the writer was not the perfect southern lady described by other biographers.

Prenshaw, Peggy W., ed. Eudora Welty: Thirteen Essays. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1983. Reprint of selections from Eudora Welty: Critical Essays, 1979. An excellent collection of essays, this compilation, unlike most, includes substantial work by significant writers. These essays deal more with Welty than with Delta Wedding, but they do map out major directions for the reader.

Thornton, Naoko Fuwa. “Delta Wedding: A Celebration of a Horrible World.” In Strange Felicity: Eudora Welty’s Subtexts on Fiction and Society. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. Examines two kinds of metafiction in Welty’s major works: literary issues, such as language, readership, and authorship, and the social subtexts below the surface of the works.

Turner, Craig W., and Lee Emling Harding, eds. Critical Essays on Eudora Welty. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989. Includes three landmark essays on Delta Wedding: “Delta Fiction” places Welty’s novel in the tradition of the old South. “Delta Wedding as Region and Symbol” analyzes the novel’s formal structure. “Meeting the World in Delta Wedding” explores its mature artistry and lyricism.

Vande Kieft, Ruth M. Eudora Welty. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1987. A classic guide to reading Welty; one of the best beginning sources, despite later scholarship. Analyzes the structures, messages, and characters in her works, focusing on the mystery and duality at the heart of her fiction.

Westling, Louise. Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O’Connor. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985. Explores the impact of the southern conception of womanhood on Delta Wedding and two other Welty novels. Discusses Welty’s fiction in relation to McCullers and O’Connor.