No Place for You, My Love by Eudora Welty
"No Place for You, My Love" by Eudora Welty is a short story that explores the fleeting connection between two strangers, a man and a woman, who meet in New Orleans. Both being northerners, they find themselves linked by their status as outsiders and decide to take a spontaneous drive into the delta region. Their journey is marked by a profound sense of isolation and the contrasting vibrancy of the lives they observe around them. While Welty employs a limited authorial voice, the characters' internal thoughts and emotions subtly emerge, particularly in their reflections on love and connection.
As they navigate the delta's landscapes, the couple grapples with their own feelings of detachment, ultimately realizing that they cannot attain the vitality they witness in others. The story features rich descriptions of the region, including encounters with locals and a pivotal moment at a beer shack where they experience community life, albeit from a distance. This narrative culminates in a brief, ambiguous moment of intimacy before the man returns the woman to her hotel, leaving both characters with lingering questions about their own lives and relationships. Through this poignant exploration, Welty captures themes of alienation and the complexities of human connection.
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No Place for You, My Love by Eudora Welty
First published: 1951
Type of plot: Realism
Time of work: The late 1940's
Locale: New Orleans, the Mississippi River delta
Principal Characters:
A northern man , a guest at a luncheon in New OrleansA northern woman , a fellow guest
The Story
Eudora Welty uses a limited authorial voice in "No Place for You, My Love," although on several occasions, she enters the consciousness of the two central characters. These characters reveal few facts about themselves, especially the woman, and the authorial voice reveals little more directly. However, although the facts of the characters' lives and their feelings are not revealed, the details of their drive through the delta are clearly described.
A man and a woman, both northerners and strangers to each other, are accidentally brought together at a luncheon in New Orleans by southern acquaintances. Looking at the woman, the man thinks that she is having an affair. She wonders to herself if her being in love makes her open to others. Conscious of their being outsiders and so somehow linked, the man invites the woman to escape by taking a ride in his rented car.
The man and woman set off to explore the delta land south of New Orleans, leaving the city at the intersection called Arabi—to which they will return. Hardly talking, they ride into flatness, oppressive heat and swarming insects. It is an alien yet fascinating land. On all sides, there are mysterious paths and roads; some are paved with shells, and one is a plank road that the man guesses leads to some oil production plant. At last, mounting the Mississippi levee, they find a ferry to take them across the great river. The ferry is crowded with people—young, old, mostly poor, but filled with life. For most of the trip across the river, though, the man and woman are separate; she spends her time above, while he is down on the deck with the cars. After the ferryboat docks, they get back in the car and leave this world of people behind, following the river farther south into a greater emptiness.
At one point, the man turns into a narrow road through a cemetery, filled with white-washed, raised tombs that their car barely avoids. Here in this place of death, she asks what his wife is like, and he responds only with a gesture. The authorial voice notes that they did not continue on to the subject of her husband, "if she had one." At last they come on the house of the local priest, a man living alone and, of course, without a woman, doing his own housework. Returning to the main road, they follow it until, just as night begins to fall, it ends in an isolated cluster of buildings, seemingly at the end of human settlement.
Here they eat at a "beer shack" where the locals gather. Slowly the little tavern fills up with people, the community coming together for their evening entertainment. Although treated with respect, the man and woman are outsiders, aliens twice over. At one point, they dance together, dancing with a skill that separates them even more from the others.
At last they return to New Orleans, driving through the still hot and oppressive night. At one point, the man stops the car and kisses the woman but that is all. Back in the city, he lets her off in front of her hotel. Here, he says, "Forgive . . . ," for kissing her, then she goes in. He is not sure, but he believes someone comes to meet her. As the story ends, he remembers, from his youth, the subway of New York, which is also terrible and alien and yet in its noise and movement holds "the lilt and expectation of love."
Bibliography
Champion, Laurie. The Critical Response to Eudora Welty's Fiction. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Gygax, Franziska. Serious Daring from Within: Female Narrative Strategies in Eudora Welty's Novels. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.
Gretlund, Jan Nordby. Eudora Welty's Aesthetics of Place. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994.
Gretlund, Jan Nordby, and Karl-Heinz Westarp, eds. The Late Novels of Eudora Welty. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
Johnston, Carol Ann. Eudora Welty: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1997.
Kreyling, Michael. Understanding Eudora Welty. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
McHaney, Pearl Amelia, ed. Eudora Welty: Writers' Reflections upon First Reading Welty. Athens, Ga.: Hill Street Press, 1999.
Montgomery, Marion. Eudora Welty and Walker Percy: The Concept of Home in Their Lives and Literature. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004.
Waldron, Ann. Eudora: A Writer's Life. New York: Doubleday, 1998.
Weston, Ruth D. Gothic Traditions and Narrative Techniques in the Fiction of Eudora Welty. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.