Submerged in Nature: Coming of Age in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding

Abstract

The Fairchild family in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding likes to tell the story of the family favorite George braving an oncoming train to save the young Maureen, confirming the family's legend of happiness. However, another story lurks under the surface of the family narrative, questioning the family's foundations. This submerged story is the story of submersion: three female characters contemplate or experience submersion in water, with imagery that speaks to coming of age: revelation, marriage, sexuality, pregnancy, and/or death. Their experiences happen necessarily within and because of the natural world. While the family's surface stories align with what they can best control, the liquid wilderness around and under the plantation structure allows for dreams, the imagination, and the supernatural. For the women, the medium of water becomes the message of vibrancy. Although physical submersion in water can be deadly, the natural world reveals different possibilities for women than the surface world of trains and plantation houses. When the White female characters physically step outside the structure of Fairchild houses and metaphorically escape the surface narrative structure, they have the opportunity to imagine an enmeshment with the natural world that sparks multiple potential narratives for their adult lives.