Delta Wedding Eudora Welty Analysis

In the Delta family is more than just a noun, it is a way of life. In Delta Wedding Eudora Welty starts off with a young girl who is just arriving at the Fairchild home in the Southern Delta. Laura is a young and quiet girl who just wants to conform to the other children in the home. The Fairchild home is very chaotic while they plan for Dabney’s wedding. The whole clan is gathering for Dabney’s, the second daughter of the family in her particular generation, marriage to Troy Flavin who is an overseer for one of the Fairchild plantations, but the Fairchilds don’t feel that Dabney should marry Troy, both because he is in a lower class than her and because they don’t feel that he is fit to take care of her, but they seldom say so, in front of

Right from the beginning we can see that Laura has it rough, her mom has just died and she has just been dropped off at a home that she doesn’t really know for the wedding of a relative that she doesn’t know very well, and as Laura is suffering from the death of her mother the Fairchilds don’t help her predicament, in fact, they make it worse “When she got there, “Poor Laura little motherless girl,” they would all run out and say, for her mother had died in the winter and they had not seen Laura since the funeral” (Welty 1). The family never visibly mourns for the death of Laura’s mother, in fact, they seem to openly mock Laura for trying to mourn her mother’s death. The Salem Press wrote a critical evaluation of Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding, and in the article she writes about how Eudora Welty creates an isolated world that the Fairchilds live in, and the family doesn’t experience poverty, grief, or suffering. The Salem Press illustrates Eudora Welty’s setting and family Delta Wedding. Eudora Welty has created the Fairchild family in a southern plantation society that is separate and unique from all of the rest, they are not affected by grief and suffering, there are no racial tensions or poverty. (Delta Wedding par.13). The Salem Press supports the idea that the Fairchilds never discuss Annie Laura’s death,

Laura goes to Partheny’s house with Shelley and India to retrieve Ellen’s lost pin, and while there she finds something that she thinks Uncle George will want, and she decides that she doesn’t want to give Dabney a gift, instead she wants to give one to Uncle George ““I want to give Uncle George a present, and to not give Dabney a present. I chose between them, which was the most precious.” “That was ugly,” Shelley whispered, as if she had never heard of such a thing” (Welty 170). Laura finally voices her opinion about whom she would like to give a gift to, even though Shelley obviously doesn’t like that Laura still stays strong on her belief. It is nice to finally see more life and personality in her, we can finally see a spark in her eyes. After Laura and her friends leave, she goes to a graveyard with Shelley to look at Annie Laurie’s grave. We finally see someone other than Laura grieve about her death, even though she doesn’t say much about the subject. Annie Laurie’s death has affected all of the Fairchilds, but they just don’t voice their feelings ““Annie Laurie,” said Shelley softly, still in that practical voice that made Laura wonder. It always seemed to Laura that when she wanted to think of her mother, they would prevent her, and when he was not thinking of her, then they would say her name” (Welty 174). Laura is always