Steps of Discovering Laurel McKleva

Eudora Welty’s novel, The Optimist’s Daughter, portrays the story of Laurel McKleva coping with the recent loss of her father while also accepting her past. Laurel McKleva, a widow from Chicago, returns to Mississippi to assist her also widowed father, Judge Clint McKleva, when he must undergo an eye surgery for a scratched retina. While dealing with the stress of staying calm and collected for her father, Laurel also tries to deal with her new stepmother Fay. Fay is much younger than Clint and acts like it as well. She is extremely rude and selfish, and shows no concern for Clint in his time of need. Slowly but surely, Clint digresses more each day and eventually passes away. Fay and Laurel made no progress in their relationship and are left in an awkward state after Clint has passed away. Laurel and Fay return together to Mount Salas for Clint’s funeral. Upon her stay in her childhood house, Laurel must make sense of her past and accept the death of her loved ones including her husband and mother. Welty uses themes such as vision, death, and memory to help Laurel to better understand her past in order to move on into her future.

Vision and more importantly lack of vision, gives the reader a deeper sense of the situation at hand. While getting older does come with a weakening vision, for Clint, it also represents his failing sense of reality. Becky, Clint’s first wife is described as a free-loving spirit, which is ironic due to the constant negative description of Fay. Although Laurel tries to diminish it, she is aware of the annoyance that Fay contributes. There is no similarity between Becky and Fay, which is unusual considering the deep love Clint had for Becky. It is uncommon for a person to be blind to a situation because ...

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...s actions and ideas she was unaware of that perplexed her. Laurel had to open her eyes and accept the man her father was by listening and acknowledging the stories told by her father’s friends. In order to see Clint for the man he was and recognize the part of his life that Laurel missed, she has to allow for the truth of the man he was not the man she saw him as.

Clint’s death is not the first death that Laurel has had to cope through; Laurel has also lost her husband and her mother. Because Laurel seems to be surrounded by death, it is hard for her to truly grasp the true meaning of life and death.

Works Cited

Images of Memory in Eudora Welty's the Optimist's Daughter. Contributors: Arnold, Marilyn - Author. Journal title: The Southern Literary Journal. Volume: 14. Issue: 2

Welty, Eudora. The Optimist's Daughter. New York: Vintage International, 1990. Print.