Eudora Welty’s second voice: how she infused her own thoughts into countless stories
Eudora Welty mastered the art of writing. She created complex characters who follow her trademark saying, that “…Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single entire human being who will never be confined in any frame”; she wrote stories about the South which harbored symbolic meanings, metaphors, and interesting characters, some difficult to crack open, but while she’s a talent at all of those things, her particular narrative voice stands out just as much. While the common idea is that writers write to create the story, which means the plot, might they also have a deeper reason? Does a writer feel a need to share something extra, more elaborate than the plot, the characters, and even the theme? When the story seems finished, does the writer say, no, I must add something?
Like all writers, Welty chooses her narrative voice, appropriate for the particular story – and there are many options – see how Helen Liu covers this in her Welty essay. But then, subtly, without most people’s knowledge, she steps out of the perceived narrative limits, almost as if she’s noticed that you, as a reader, need a little bit of prodding, or a little extra to think about. Most often, her second narrative voice appears when Welty asks rhetorical questions in her stories. One wonders, are these questions for herself, signaling that she can’t even fully understand the depths of her pen-created characters? Or are they only for the reader, making them think long and hard about what the outcome of the story might be? Of course, there are times when Welty doesn’t use questions to aid her second voice. Sometimes, all she does is hide her words of wisdom in half of a sentence, seamlessly transitioning between her character’s thoughts to her own. Is Welty’s use of both normal and second voice narration what brings her story to an even higher level? Does this second voice have certain characteristics, ones that elevate her writing? What exactly is Welty’s method when it comes to stepping out of the box of her narrative voice and entering a wider zone of commentary and inquiry?
On North Congress Street of Jackson, Mississippi, April 13, 1909, with the striking of an old grandfather clock and the whirring of a small bird poking out of a cuckoo clock, Eudora Welty made her appearance – the first daughter of Christian and Chestina Welty. From there on, she grew into a fun toddler, a book-loving young girl, a talented photographer… and a phenomenal American author. At the apex of her career, several years after winning the Pulitzer for The Optimist’s Daughter, she was invited to do three lectures at Harvard University in 1983, later becoming the book One Writer’s Beginnings. This memoir stayed at the top of NY Times Listings week after week, for almost a full year (unheard of for a literary memoir).
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Her recollections in One Writer’s Beginnings all started with Welty’s parents nourishing her and providing a multitude of experiences. Her mother read to her often – mornings, afternoons, nights, even when she was churning away in the kitchen. It was because of her that Welty quickly came to the realization at the “age of two or three [,] that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or to be read to” (5). Growing up listening to the voice of her mother reading in her rocker or in front of the coal fire was sure to be “good at least for a future fiction writer, being able to learn so penetratingly” (3). Welty goes on to say this helped her develop a voice inside of her that read every line out loud.
As she put it, “It isn’t my mother’s voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it” (11). Is this what perhaps guides her to the creation of an extra voice, being so conscious of its origin?
Welty’s father, on the other hand, pushed the curious side of his daughter, guiding her see the world in a different way. With her father, she grasped concepts of meteorology, later helping her to create specific atmospheres in her fiction, where “commotion in the weather and the inner feelings aroused by such a hovering disturbance emerged connected in dramatic form” (4). For instance, while writing “First Love” Welty created the freezing winter of 1806-7, adding dramatic effect to the story, where even the reader can start to shiver at the thought of the “strange drugged fall of snow” (153) through meteorological research. Christian Welty also provided Eudora with hands-on experiences, giving her both train sets that had “the engine with its pea-sized working headlight, its line of cars, tracks equipped with switches” (5) and countless other mini things. That is not to say her father didn’t enjoy literature. He too cherished it, reading Sanford and Merton many times over, until the book “was lacking its front cover, the back held on by strips of pasted paper, now turned golden, in several layers, and the pages stained, flecked, and tattered around the edges” (8). This Sanford and Merton wasn’t the more famous one written by Thomas Day, but instead it is Sanford and Merton in Words of One Syllable by Mary Godolphon. As Welty described it, “Here are the rich boy and the poor boy and Mr. Barlow… in long discourses alternating with dramatic scenes” (7). It only uses one syllable words and ends with two morals: “Do what you ought, come what may,” and “If we would be great, we must first learn to be good.”
The first section of One Writer’s Beginnings is titled “Listening.” With both her mother and her father, Welty listened, whether it was to stories being read aloud or to the description of fancy gadgets. She discusses how she first had to listen for stories, knowing they existed, before she got to writing them. Even at night, when she lay in bed, Welty listened to the “murmur of [her parents’] voices, the back-and-forth” (21). While she didn’t know what they were talking about, she felt that she “was included, in–and–because of—what I could hear of their voices” (21). Growing up listening to everything around her gave Welty the tools to create her own future voice.
After expanding her knowledge with her parents, Welty had her first experiences at school, the Davis School, just a short walk away from her home. Despite Miss Duling, the principal, being on the strict side, “a lifelong subscriber to perfection [and] a figure of authority” (22), Welty learned a lot: “grammar, arithmetic, spelling, reading, writing, and geography.” People often say that the basics are the most important, and that’s exactly what Welty was learning at the Davis School, building up her foundation for her later success in writing. And even young Eudora, just a fourth grader then, was demonstrating a strong love and appreciation towards books. During the rainy days at school, when it was too dark to teach normal classes, she was envious of the other fourth graders in Mrs. McWillie’s class, who got to hear The King of the Golden River being read aloud.
A book by John Ruskin, The King of the Golden River starts with a paragraph of beautifully written setting: Treasure Valley, capable of rain, sun and crops no matter the time: “But the clouds were drawn so constantly to the snowy hills… that in time of drought and heat, when all the country round was burned up, there was still the rain in the little valley.” Ruskin then moves on to depicting the three characters living in this valley – two ugly and cruel older brothers who “killed everything that did not pay for its eating” and a younger brother, an exact opposite of his older siblings, who was “kind in temper to every living thing.” Once characters are introduced, Ruskin brings us into desperate times, when crops have failed everywhere except this valley. He showcases the impressive lack of sympathy of the two older brothers and brings in rising action with a “little gentleman”. I wonder what the little gentleman will do in the future?
Nevertheless, Welty did not get to hear about the Treasure Valley, or the little gentleman being read aloud. But she did enjoy the spelling bees in Miss Louella Varando’s class. As Welty put it, “I did not suspect that there was any other way I could learn the story of The King of the Golden River than to have been assigned in the beginning to Mrs. McWillie’s cowering fourth grade, then wait for her to treat you to it on the rainy day of her choice” (28). Of course, Welty later read it on her own time (though it didn’t quite reach her expectations). Still, reading it must have expanded her horizon, helping the development of her future narrative voice.
Welty’s loving childhood didn’t just stop at school or reading – it could also be seen in the car trips her family took in the summer “to Ohio and West Virginia to visit the two families” in their “five-passenger Oakland touring car” (43). These trips let her discover interesting aspects of her family history and experience both sides of her family. Her mother’s side in West Virginia was situated in the mountains, with the Elk River somewhere below. Experiences here taught Welty a sense of independence and freedom. As Welty put it, “It took the mountain top, it seems to me now, to give me the sensation of independence. It was as if I’d discovered something I’d never tasted before in my short life” (57). On the other hand, her father’s side in Ohio lived a more traditional life in “one of the neat, narrow-porched, two-story farmhouses, painted white, of the Pennsylvania-German country” (62). This gave her the experience of northern farm life. They went to church on Sundays, in the designated “shiny black buggy… with a fringe on top” (66). And while this house might not have been as exciting as one in the mountains, and the family not as talkative, it was very loving: “He never brought out much to say till I was ready to go. Then on my last day… he never stopped talking at all. He talked up one blue streak” (62), Welty’s mother would say about Grandpa Welty.
Skipping a bit farther ahead into her adult years, Welty was also a nationally-recognized photographer. In some ways, taking photos is similar to writing – it can capture a story. However, one is done without any words, as there is only a moment, or a snapshot, to convey everything. Every time she took a photo, she likely thought of what her message was; why was she snapping the shutter at this moment? This is like a form of narration, but it’s without words and can be interpreted in many ways by others.
Looking at Welty’s special ability to create a wise second voice, we should remember to give credit to her parents who provided her with such an enriching environment. And perhaps it is because the characters she created lack the nourishing childhood Welty herself grew up in, she took the creative liberty to step in and add her perception of the world, the second voice.
As we read through The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, “Livvie” shows examples of Welty’s second narrative voice. Livvie is a young woman, only 25 years old, who has been married to Solomon, an old and dying man for nine years. They live together deep on the Natchez Trace, an ancient Native American road which is featured in several of the stories I read, where Livvie hasn’t left their house or its vicinity, much if at all. She isn’t miserable, but she also doesn’t enjoy the freedom and life a 25 year-old should be getting.
As Livvie and Cash (a handsome field hand who Livvie is just noticing) watch Solomon sleeping, close to death, Welty writes, “People’s faces tell of things and places not known to the one who looks at them while they sleep, and while Solomon slept under the eyes of Livvie and Cash his face told them like a mythical story that all his life he had built, little scrap by little scrap, respect” (237). For half a sentence, Welty went into a more general form, saying “People’s faces” instead of focusing on just Livvie. Welty is infusing a larger picture and an idea that can be applied to life in general. Is she infusing the reader’s understanding of Solomon from a perspective wider and more knowledgeable than Livvie could have? Had Livvie witnessed this before – the idea that one’s face during sleep tells of things that aren’t usually seen during the waking hours? Perhaps, perhaps not.
On page 238, Welty writes, “Livvie and Cash could see that as a man might rest from a life-labor he lay in his bed… he sighed to himself comfortably in sleep, while in his dreams he might have been an ant, a beetle, a bird, an Egyptian, assembling and carrying on his back and building with his hands, or he might have been an old man of India or a swaddled baby, about to smile and brush all away” (238). In the first half of the sentence, Welty writes like she has the whole story, describing what Livvie sees and hears. But then, starting at “while in his dreams,” a secondary wisdom settles in. We already know that Livvie has been living in isolation, deep in the Natchez Trace, for nine years, so it seems to be a stretch for Livvie to be making observations that Solomon could be “an Egyptian, assembling and carrying on his back and building with his hands.” What could make more sense in this situation is Welty making these observations for Livvie, stepping out of the perceived limits of her narrative voice, helping the reader’s imagination along and making the story all the more interesting.
Not just in “Livvie” does Welty present to us her second voice – it also appears in “A Memory”, which is a unique story because it’s one of Welty’s own memories of growing up. Welty writes, “I was at an age when I formed a judgment upon every person and every event which came under my eye, although I was easily frightened” (75). This seems to be her second voice as well, written many years later looking back to understand her younger self. Her wise voice isn’t just narrating the story of her memory but starting to understand that at this age, she would form “a judgment upon every person and every event,” itself a secondary voice.
Welty sees her (first) crush, who she has immense feelings for, get a nosebleed: “But this small happening which had closed in upon my friend was a tremendous shock to me; it was unforeseen, but at the same dreaded; I recognized it, and suddenly I leaned heavily on my arm and fainted. Does this explain why, ever since that day, I have been unable to bear the sight of blood?” (76). Welty went from discussing a crucial moment of her pre-teen years to pondering her own thoughts about this, perhaps being the reason why she can’t “bear the sight of blood.”
Welty’s second voice also adds a layer of understanding that the reader can gain towards her. We start seeing how this memory plays an important role in the development of her character and person, and we get the chance to connect a couple of moments of her younger self into how she is as an adult. This is similar to the many times throughout One Writer’s Beginnings that Welty looks back at her own childhood and sees her formation. Just one example would be, “The future story writer in the child I was must have taken unconscious note and stored it away then: one secret is liable to be revealed in the place of another that is harder to tell, and the substitute secret when nakedly exposed is often the more appalling” (17). This “substitute secret” realization was from a life-changing moment when as a curious young girl, Welty dug around her mom’s drawer to find a “small white cardboard box” that held “two polished buffalo nickels.” Seemingly not important, young Welty soon learned just how much meaning they held. These were two nickels that belonged to her little brother who had died before she was born – “They had lain on his eyelids, for a purpose untold and unimaginable” (17). In one moment, Welty realizes that she is not the first-born child. Just like the memory told in this short story, the two buffalo nickels also influenced and changed Welty’s later life. Her realization that “one secret is liable to be revealed in the place of another” could also connect to her writing. She’s writing her primary narrative, but at the same time, unearthing that secondary narrative (secret).
Welty’s second voice also seems to have a pattern of appearing when characters have less freedom. It appears in “Livvie”, where Livvie had been isolated in Solomon’s house for nine years, and now it takes shape in “The Whistle” where Jason and Sara Morton live a disheartening life. They are sharecroppers in extreme poverty, controlled entirely by Mr. Perkins. At a blow of the whistle, they must get up to tend to their tomato crops, no matter the time of day.
This story starts with a panoramic illustration of the farm, as if in a movie. The camera is far away, and from 300-1,00 feet above the earth you can see a “farm [that] lay quite visible, like a white stone in water, among the stretches of deep woods in their colorless dead leaf” (57). But even from this view, one can see the dots of “the tiny tomato plants in their neat rows closest to the house… appalling in their exposed fragility” (57). Welty does an excellent job of setting a dejected tone, even the lamp in the famous “had just been blown out.”
Then the camera zooms in, getting closer, as if the narrator is now entering their farmhouse to see the two “lying between the quilts of a pallet.” The narrator tells us about Jason lying there with “his lips opened in the dark” and Sara on her back “with her mouth agape, silent, but not asleep.” This is what the narration usually covers, but as they continue to lie there trembling, it’s as if the second voice starts to make an appearance, silently creeping in. It says that “every night they lay trembling with cold, but no more communicative in their misery than a pair of window shutters beaten by a storm” (57). Welty, no longer painting a cinematic picture, is now taking the time to add a paragraph highlighting their lack of communication, making it even clearer how miserable their life is. She gives information such as “They were not really old—they were only fifty; still, their lives were filled with tiredness, with a great lack of necessity to speak.”
Welty also writes, “Perhaps, years ago, the long habit of silence may have been started in anger or passion. Who could tell now?” Just like in “A Memory” Welty is asking rhetorical questions that give the reader a little something more to think about. And we also wonder, does Welty even know the reason behind their “long habit of silence” or is she just demonstrating the near-breaking point that Sara and Jason are at? Or, does she know, but she purposefully occludes this from the reader because Jason and Sarah themselves have forgotten? As we read, it makes us wonder how bad life has to be for a couple of fifty to entirely lock themselves into their own silent world, even when the other is only a couple of inches away, lying on the same sleazy quilts. Perhaps in addition to being able to move between characters’ actions and her own words of wisdom (seen in “Livvie”), Welty is also able to prod the reader along in their thoughts, which she does by subtly incorporating her voice and questions into the text.
A last example of Welty adding questions in a second voice is in “The Wide Net.” William Wallace has gone off to the river to look for his pregnant wife Hazel in fear that she had gone to drown herself. He dives down deep into the dark waters of the river: “All day William Wallace kept diving to the bottom” (180). However, while this paragraph starts off with Welty’s usual narrative voice, describing the dive, the darkness at such depths, the bubbles on the surface, it seems as if Welty starts speculating as well. She writes, “So far down and all alone, had he found Hazel? Had he suspected down there, like some secret, the real, the true trouble that Hazel had fallen into, about which words in a letter could not speak… and there was nothing she could do about it—they knew—and so it had turned into this?” (180). Of course, one could argue that this is Welty continuing to narrate William Wallace’s subconscious submerged in the water, and not infusing her own thoughts, but it also seems as if she is trying to hint at what she knows as an author. Welty obviously already knows what happens to Hazel later in the story, so it’s like once again, she is prodding the reader along and providing a voice which only wisdom and the perspicuity of special insight brings. She makes one wonder what William Wallace was doing down in the water. Was he exploring his own consciousness, knowing his life is about to change with a new baby? Welty’s extra voice also helps the reader produce their own ideas as to what Hazel really meant with the letter she wrote (basic plot).
With these four examples, it seems that Welty’s second voice appears most often in the form of questions. She throws them in after an important occurrence, as if she doesn’t want the reader to slack off. They make you think, not just about the story, but about life around it. Have you ever seen a sleeping family member or friend and wondered what they thought they had dreamed of? Are there moments from your own childhood (or younger years for us still in our teens) that have changed your way of life now, or been a watershed? Why do couples fall into a void of silence that neither cares to fill? These are all excellent questions raised by Welty through her second voice. So perhaps what the second voice really does is make the readers’ brains turn. Welty, being so educated from her youngest years at the Davis School, the University of Wisconsin Madison, then Columbia University, and of course being brought up so fastidiously by her loving parents, was an exceptional writer filled with wisdom, and she uses her stories to not just to tell an exquisite tale of different characters, but to add insight into the lives of each and every character, and thereby, each and every reader.