The Optimist's Daughter

The major characters in The Optimist's Daughter are Judge McKelva, Becky Mckelva, Laurel Mckelva, Wanda Fay, Dr. Courtland, Miss Adele Courtland, Tish Bullock, Major Bullock, Miss Tennyson, and Miss Missouri. Becky Mckelva was Judge Mckelva's wife before she died and had Laurel Mckelva with him. Wanda Fay remarried Judge Mckelva after his wife's death. Dr. Courtland did surgery on Becky Mckelva and the final operation on Judge Mckelva. Miss Adele Courtland is the sister of Dr. Courtland and is a

her novel by showing two completely different people put in the same position. Fay and Becky are both married to a high ranking official, move to a new town where they hardly know anyone, and have to overcome death and disease. The novel The Optimist’s Daughter portrays two contrasting characters, Fay and Becky McKelva, through the honor of society, the love of a husband, and the idea of selfishness. Becky McKelva and Fay are immensely different in the way that their society views them. Where the

response to the loss of a loved one. It is numbing and can take a vast toll on a person. How someone “formulates or represents the past shapes their understanding and views of the present” (House). The process of grief in Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter is displayed by characterization, figurative language, symbolism, and flashback. For instance, everyone copes with grief differently and at their own pace. Many react to death by becoming depressed, angry, engaging in reckless compulsive behavior

The Optimist’s Daughter The Optimist’s daughter is seen as a reflective and moving novel about love, suspense, and isolation ( Eudora Welty 2).Welty has a gentle power to grasp the impression of country, and uses it to get the attention of the readers by inferring (Bloom, Modern Critical views 93). Eudora Welty describes themes such as making peace with the past and memories to help cope with the deaths of her husband, mother, and now her loving father. One of America’s most admired authors, Eudora

The novel The Optimist’s Daughter portrays two contrasting characters, Fay and Becky McKelva, through the honor of society, the love of a husband, and the idea of selfishness. Becky McKelva and Fay are immensely different in the way that their society views them. Where the people of Mount Salus view Becky as an upstanding, revered citizen, they view Fay almost as a menace to the town. The town’s people perceive fay to be an obnoxious woman who only thinks of herself. In their eyes and in Laurel’s

Brianna Moran Mrs. Aleman AP English Period 2 19 September 2016 Eudora Welty as a Feminine Feminist The feminist events of Eudora Welty’s life and of the Feminist Movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s are reflected in her novel, The Optimist’s Daughter. Breaking down her writing style leads to the recognition of the similar themes, symbols, and imagery that provide a feminist/feminine outlook of a woman in a man’s world. As a female author, Welty provides feminine descriptors as well as a strong female

able to create new identity. Both novels deal with a female character that loses her beloved. Memories play significant roles in the development of the plot. On the one hand, Laurel who is the female protagonist of Eudora Welty, in The Optimistic Daughter, has returned from Chicago to her hometown in Mississippi after being with her father, Judge Mckelva, in his final days. While Laurel is struggling to bury her father and deal with her stepmother Fay, she is haunted by the memories of her deceased

Opposition can often be presented with a negative connotation; however, opposition can also be seen through a positive lens as it results in greater realizations. In The Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora Welty portrays the life of Laurel who soon opposed by her stepmother Fay, but the few similarities she has with Fay brings Laurel to a realization about her own life. Laurel and Fay’s physical and emotional responses are their key differences, becoming the main cause of their opposition. However, the reader

woman's place is in the home. She is the mother who gives us life and with it our morality. As such, Welty's novels and short stories present mostly the matriarchal order. In her short novels Delta Wedding (1946), Losing Battles (1970) and The Optimist's Daughter (1972), she represents an agrarian society, i.e., plantation life. While the male members spend most of their time outside, the mothers play an important role in shaping the family life. The mother in Welty's fiction represents the ancient order

The story focuses on the strained relationship of a mother, which is the narrator, and her two daughters, Dee and Maggie. “Not only is each of the three characters, Mama, Maggie, and Dee explicitly or implicitly associated with animals, but the story takes place on a ‘pasture’ (27), down the road from which several ‘beef-cattle peoples’ (30) live and