Traditional “Southern Gentleman

Eudora Alice Welty was born on April 13, 1909, in Jackson, Mississippi. Eudora Welty’s parents were born in the North, and after meeting and falling in love at college, they were married. Both of Welty’s parents wanted to move from their hometowns, but it was Welty’s mother who persuaded her newly wedded husband to “set off for a new life and a new part of the world for both of them, in Jackson, Mississippi” (Welty, One 57). The couple’s move proved to be an important influence on Eudora, as she would later become one of the South’s best-known authors (Giles 305). When Welty began writing she was able to intimately portray a Southern lifestyle, which caused many readers to extol her work (Schmitt 290). Welty received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Howells Medal in 1955 for one of her comic novels, The Ponder Heart, and in 1973 she received the Pulitzer Prize for The Optimist’s Daughter (Giles 294). In 1984 Welty finished her autobiography, One Writer’s Beginning, which “spent forty-six weeks on the New York Times best-seller list” (Giles 317-318). In these three books, Welty portrays the fathers as always being human and vulnerable, yet ad

“In the South, the man as he appeared in public was the man; his public appearance was his moral life. The nearest equivalent to the ‘inner life’ was ‘private affairs.’ The New Englander was mystical, religious; the Southerner, practical, materialistic. Private affairs were not enquired into and they had no public value. A man’s property was his character” (qtd. in Phillips 13).

Like Welty’s real father, McKelva is a traditional “Southern gentleman” because he is a moral, just, and worldly man who works hard to provide for his family. He displays his care and love for the community by doing public activities that aid in its economic and social development. For example, out of public concern, the McKelvas builds a Presbyterian Church in their town (Phillips 14). In addition, before McKelva is elected as the community judge, he is the mayor of the town, which helps increase his public and moral character (Welty, Optimist’s 141). Despite becoming a well-known public figure, McKelva remains a modest and thoughtful man who is supportive of his motherless daughter (Welty, Optimist’s 98). “They said he was a humorist. And a crusader. And an angel on the face of the earth,” Judge McKelva’s daughter proclaims (Welty, Optimist’s 100-101).

Like Welty’s real father, and Judge McKelva, Uncle Daniel financially supports his family, but acquires the money from his inheritance instead of a profitable job. Furthermore, Uncle Daniel tries to support everyone else’s family by throwing his money around as if it has no value to him, mainly because he strives to seek approval from the people of the town because he wants to demonstrate his power as a public folk-hero (Seaman and Walker 73; Baris 49). An example of him giving away money to the whole town is when he is in the Clay Courthouse, on trial for tickling his wife to death. Before the judge can announce his sentence, Uncle Daniel rises from his seat and proceeds to hand out handfuls of money. “He stepped down to the floor, and out through the railing, and starts up the aisle, and commences handing out big green handfuls as he comes, on both sides” (Welty, Ponder 144).

In this passage from The Ponder Heart, Edna Earle, Uncle Daniel’s younger, yet brighter sister, gives examples of things that Uncle Daniel has recently given away. Instead of doing public deeds to get recognition from the town, Uncle Daniel achieves his goal of becoming publicly popular by giving “miscellaneous” things away (Welty, Ponder 13).

ored men on the edge of their daughter’s life (Westling 111). Although each of these three books depicts the traditional “Southern gentleman,” in The Ponder Heart, Welty chooses to parody the father character that she uses in One Writer’s Beginning and The Optimist’s Daughter.

In One Writer’s Beginning, The Optimist’s Daughter, and The Ponder Heart, Eudora Welty uses her experiences of living in Mississippi to intimately

Some topics in this essay:
Uncle Daniel, Optimist’s Daughter, Writer’s Beginning, Seaman Walker, Man” Phillips, Ponder Heart, Stonewall Jackson, Welty Optimist’s, Beginning Eudora, Eudora Welty’s, uncle daniel, writer’s beginning, optimist’s daughter, ponder heart, traditional “southern, “southern gentleman”, welty’s father, traditional “southern gentleman”, judge mckelva, beginning optimist’s daughter, beginning optimist’s, phillips 13, writer’s beginning optimist’s, novel ponder heart, father writer’s beginning,