Book Review: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty

At least she's from the Delta.

This book is, I think, the finest rebuke to the genre of overly-sentimental fiction that I have ever seen. (I haven't read anything about it, so I'm going to write this review and then comb all the reviews about it). Eudora, we're going to be on first name basis now, Eudora is a master of some of the most difficult types of writing that can easily go wrong. In the hands of a less skillful writer, this work would have collapsed under its own weight into sentimentality or stretched into a mocking, mean parody of people she might have known.

I recently read a work that stretched into meanness in that way - Mary McCarthy's The Group. And in fact she lost a lot of friends when McCarthy published it. Well, Eudora isn't any less clear-eyed about her characters' faults, but instead of one or two author-insert characters seeing the faults of every other character, Eudora whirls around giddily, loving everyone, criticizing everyone. The most salient characteristic of this book is a hot love like a summer day in the South, and the most common topic of conversation is criticism. Also, if anything, the author-insert is the place of the Mississippi Delta.

(Nota bene: the Mississippi Delta as a whole isn't exactly known for its positive racial relations and this book reflects that history, to some extent.The book was written in the 1940s and set in the early 1920s, for context, and oh! there are some shockers. To be fair, the characters are similarly patronizing to several mentally ill characters.)

So here are some things that Eudora does well:

1) atmosphere

I do not live in the south but this novel nearly convinced me to up and move to Mississippi today.

Flocks of birds flew up from the fields, the little filly went delightedly through the wet paths, breasting and breaking the dewy nets of spider webs. Opening morning-glories were turned like eyes on her pretty feet. The occasional fences smelled sweet, their darkened wood swollen with night dew like sap, and following her progress the bayou rustled within, ticked and cried. The sky was softly blue all over, the last rim of sunrise cloud melting into it like the foam on fresh milk.

With her whip lifted Dabney passed Troy's house, and passed through Mound Field and Far Field, through the Deadening and on toward the trees, where the Yazoo was. Turning and going along up here, looking through the trees and across the river, you could see Marmion. Around the bend in the early light that was still night-quiet in the cypressy place, the little filly went confidently and fastidiously as ever. 

Dabney bent her head to the low bows, and then saw the house reflected in the Yazoo River - an undulant tower with white wings at each side, like a hypnotized swamp butterfly, spread and dreaming where it alights. Then the house itself reared delicate and vast, with a strict tower, up from its reflection, and Dabney gazed at it counting its rooms.

2) dialogue

Note: it is truly a shame to abstract any single line of text from all the rest of the novel, so I won't try for context - just the interrupted, distracted quality of the whole novel. The house is packed full of people, ranging from babies to great-great aunts, and it is rare that a conversation proceeds in a straightforward manner.

"Bring those affairs here to me, Ranny child," said Aunt Tempe.
"Oughtn't we to wait and let Dabney open everything that comes?"
Aunt Tempe shook out a dress and held it at an authoritative angle with her head tilted to match. "I must say I never heard of a red wedding before."
"American Beauty, Aunt Tempe!" cried India, teasingly whisking it from her and beginning to dance about after Dabney, holding it high.
"I stand corrected," said Aunt Tempe. 

"They fade out before they get to Shelly and Dabney," Laura told her consolingly. 

... "Well, of course I can't talk," said Aunt Tempe, looking fixedly at the bride dancing and the three dresses without any heads dancing around her, with Vi'let beginning to chase them. "My own daughter married a Yankee. --Naturally, I bring her to Memphis and Inverness to have her babies--and name them."
"It's not like Dabney was going out of the Delta," called the pale pink waltzing dress.
"Poor Mary Denis went clear to Illinois."
"Oh, Aunt Tempe, how's Mary Denis?" Dabney cried, coming to a momentary stop. "I did so want her for a bridesmaid!"
"She's thin as a rail and white as a ghost now!" 

"I bet she's beautiful as ever! How much did the her baby weight?"
"Ten pounds, child; little George."
"Oh, how could you tear yourself away?" asked Dabney in a painful voice, holding a pose before the long mirror. She bent her arm and looked tenderly down over imaginary flowers. Vi'let smiled.
"I was prevailed upon," said Aunt Tempe, but Dabney had run lightly out of the parlor again, snatching a flight of dresses and letting them fall over Vi'let, covering her as she giggled, with a bright cascade. Bluet, Maureen, Ranny, and Laura reeled after her, still under the spell, and Lady Clare was still playing "Country Gardens."

3) love

The whole novel is love refracted in a thousand ways. Mother-love, brother-love, cousin-love, neighbor-love, family-love generally, and romantic love, not least of all.

There are three primary romantic relationships, all in different stages. First, Battle Fairchild and Ellen his wife - Ellen a Virginia girl of good family, the mother to nine children, including Dabney. Battle's brother George has recently married Robbie, and at the beginning of the novel they are in a serious fight - she drove away and left him. The family does not approve of her, and Robbie in many ways does not agree with the family's treatment of George, her husband. And the third couple: Dabney is about to marry Troy (the Delta Wedding of the title). Again, the family only marginally approves of him. And yet there is very little said to either of their faces - when it is said, it is notable and quickly swept under the rug.

This excerpt is from near the end of the novel, after Robbie has returned and the storms have passed. Ellen looks at the pair of them and muses:

Would Robbie's unseeing, fighting anger suit him better, then, than too close a divination? Well, that depended not on how Robbie loved him but on how he loved Robbie, and on other things that she, being mostly mother, and being now tired, did not know. Just now they kissed, with India coming up close on her toes to see if she could tell yet what there was about a kiss.

The whole family watched them "make up". And how did George himself think of this thing? They saw him let Robbie go, then kiss her one more time, and Battle laughed out  from the pillows. 

George wished it might yet be intensified. Inextinguishable, the little adventure, like anything else, burned on.

4) childhood expectations

The Fairchilds are too close for comfort, in many ways, and outsiders, even close relatives like motherless cousin Laura (age 9) is left somewhat outside the main family circle.

Then Ellen was saying, catching the little girl in the hall, "Laura, there's something to tell you. We want you to stay, to live with us at Shellmount. Until you go to Marmion, perhaps... Would you be happy? Your papa would listen to reason, he hopes you'd be happy too. India would be glad.. Something's got all the curl out of your poor hair!" 

The visit, the round-trip ticket on the Dog, had been just a premonition - now they told her what it would really be. Shellmount! The real thing might always dawn upon her slowly, Laura felt, hanging her head while Aunt Ellen sadly stretched a straight strand of her hair out on her finger. That feeling that came over her - it was of having been cheated a little, not being told at once. And so she answered overly soon, overly brightly, "Oh, I want to! I want to stay!" Then she cried, "But I don't want to go to Marmion!" 

... Uncle Battle laughed.

Laura felt in the end she would go - go from all this, go back to her father. She would hold that secret, and kiss Uncle Battle now.

I hope you go and pick up this book and read it. It's a real pleasure and I look forward to meeting Eudora again soon for another foray into a totally unknown land - the South of the past. Me, I'm a sharp-nosed fast-talking disrespectful Northern girl, and I'm totally fascinated by this magical land where your mouth can get washed out for calling somebody a fool, where everyone is polite, where social status is bred in deep, where women are responsible for carrying on the dynasty.