3.5/5This is less a review than a running collection of my thoughts as recorded in an experimental thread for "The Southern Literary Trail" group.Part ILaurel seems like she's got a lot to learn about her father and perhaps mother. I'm wondering whether Fay will be the conduit for that learning. The contentious relationship that exists right now seems to have the seeds of a much deeper experience. I think perhaps Welty has created a kind of bildungsroman around Laurel. Though she's a worldly woman, she seems naive about the most important things in life: her family.Which made me think about the way we contemplate family. The close relationships between the Judge and Laurel very much reminds me of the relationship between the people of my mother's generation and their parents (my grandparents). They seem to define family as a function of blood. That come hell or high water (as Grandma would say) family is family. But my generation seems to have a more flexible definition of family, a more fungible definition. For many of us family is what you make it. There is no fate but rather choice holding people together. Perhaps that is not a good thing, but that is what I was thinking about while reading the opening chapters.There is only one more chapter (about 15 pages) between me and Part II of the book, so maybe I'll get that out of the way this evening.Enjoying the book so far. The patois is not so thick that non-southerners wouldn't understand. That's been the case with a number of our books this year.Oh, and New Orleans again! Not that I mind, but ACOD, ATKM, and now TOD have all been set in the Crescent City. And we've got The Moviegoer coming up. Maybe NOLA is to Southern Modernism what London is to Victorian literature?And I found it interesting that we were joking about this being called the Optometrist's Daughter when the opening chapter centers on eye surgery. Part IIThe arrival of Wanda Fay's family from Texas surprised me as did the way Welty handled them. None of the characters seemed to have a distinct personality, and I feel like they were a group character. Their bickering and arguments seem to exist for the sake of putting conflict into the story and providing a jumping off point for several very memorable moments.I did not think that the funeral itself was very emotional. Or not emotion driven in the way most great writing is. That's not to say the book isn't good. It is. But I don't feel like it is great.CS Lewis gave writes some great advice that I see so many break on a regular basis: don't tell us the characters are sad, make us feel sad for them; don't tell us they are happy, make us feel their joy. Welty doesn't really make me feel anything for Laurel or Fay or what they are going through. I understand, intellectually, Laurel is upset and angry with the careless talk of Fay's family, but I don't feel anger on her behalf. There are several lines in the story that I really loved. First of all, I love the comment that (and I'm paraphrasing) "There isn't anyone you look at sleeping and wonder whether you've misjudged them." That seemed like such a philosophical quote I can't help but think The Optimist's Daughter is less about the catharsis of suffering and death, than it is reevaluation of what one believes to be true. That is doubly so after reading the exchange between Laurel and Miss Adele during the funeral.(view spoiler)[When Laurel thinks the family is misrepresenting her father she says (again paraphrasing), "This is still his house, and they are still his guests. And they are misrepresenting him, falsifying. That's what mother would call it. He would never have stood for lies being told about him. Not at any time. Never"To which, Miss Adele responds, "Oh yes he would, if the truth might hurt the wrong person.""The least anyone can do is remember right", Laurel finished her argument. (hide spoiler)]
It's not easy becoming an orphan at any age. Suddenly, your safety net is gone. You are adrift. And no one will ever call you "son" or "daughter" again.Just like me, Laurel was a middle-aged woman when she was orphaned. Unlike me, Laurel had to cope not only with the death of her father, but the persistent and annoying presence of her "evil" new stepmother, Fay. Just how awful is Fay? As pesky as a gnat and as prone to tantrums as a spoiled child, she is undoubtedly irritating. Nothing passes without Fay having to comment on it, and as Welty explains - Her flattery and disparagement sounded just alike. When her husband, Judge McKelva is diagnosed with a slipped retina, she declares, "I don't see why this had to happen to me." Annoying as Fay is, she's a great character, and the book could not exist without her. Her embarrassment over the arrival of her white trash relatives from Texas, the relatives she claimed were dead, was almost touching. Why on earth did Judge Mac marry this woman? Well, he was an optimist...But, Laurel, of course, carries the soul of the book in her sensible heart. Her return home for the funeral leaves her steeped in memories of her beloved mother. She seems astonishingly accepting of the fact that the horrid Fay has been left the house and all of its possessions. I doubt that I would remain as calm under such circumstances.Laurel is certainly not as attached to "things" as I am. As she unsentimentally dusts her father's library for the last time, my heart was breaking. I wanted her to pack the whole thing up and take it with her. But Laurel is wise. She realizes that in the end, we are left with nothing but fond memories of things that used to be, and people that have passed through our lives, touching us in ways that will never be forgotten. Who needs things when you have a memory like this one:When Laurel was a child, in this room and in this bed where she lay now, she closed her eyes like this and the rhythmic, nighttime sound of the two beloved reading voices came rising in turn up the stairs, every night to reach her. She could hardly fall asleep, she tried to keep awake, for pleasure. She cared for her own books, but she cared more for theirs, which meant their voices. In the lateness of the night, their two voices reading to each other where she could hear them, never letting a silence divide or interrupt them, combined into one unceasing voice and wrapped her around as she listened, as still as if she were asleep. She was sent to sleep under a velvety cloak of words, richly patterned and stitched with gold, straight out of a fairy tale, while they went reading on into her dreams.
What do You think about The Optimist's Daughter (2002)?
The Optimist's Daughter is a subtle, old-fashioned novel set in the South that explores social class, death, and values through the conflict between the middle-aged, widowed, well-bred daughter of a judge, Laurel, and her ignorant, red necked, younger stepmother, Fay. Once the judge dies under questionable circumstances, the old world - Laurel and her bridesmaids - try to fend off the encroaching new one - Fay, and her hayseed relatives. Yet, the past keeps rearing it's disturbing head. As Eudora Welty so beautifully puts it, "Memory returned like spring..." And, both Laurel and Fay need to deal with it.Perhaps this eloquent novel would have grabbed me emotionally if I had read it when it was originally published in the 70s. Instead, it left me feeling like a distant (in all senses of the word) cousin with a ringside seat at a macabre funeral. While it transported me to New Orleans and Mississippi, it didn't touch me until Laurel stumbles upon the breadboard. The conversations this story provoked at our book club were more compelling than the novel itself. Optimistically, the writing was powerful enough to warrant the Pulitzer Prize.
—Ket Lamb
One of my favorite quotations from this book comes in the second half. "Memory returned like spring, Laurel thought. Memory had the character of spring. In some cases, it was the old wood that did the blooming." This is Laurel's thought as she considers the past, the last months of her mother's life when all was unhappiness, her father seeming to drift, the loss of her beloved Phil. And so, memory and death are dealt with and reconciled. As is the present.Memory and death are two of the major themes of this short novel, but along with these is rebirth, both of the Judge's home garden, described in careful and loving detail by many, and of his daughter. Perhaps also of the Judge who seems not to have been truly living for some time.I found so much to enjoy here; there are the same poetic writing I've come to expect and anticipate from Welty and the characters who are both eccentric and very human. I will definitely continue to read more of her work and recommend it to others.
—Sue
Welty's novel has spunk. Horrified by the new wife's character at the beginning of a narrative that seems built around an old man dying, my initial impression was that this book would be an ensemble cast narrative of a specific Southern community and somewhat comic but lightweight reading. The structure, however, changes as the book continues. From a narrative rife with dialogue, there is a deepening of the layers during the later passages about the optimist's daughter and much prose that delicately pokes at the fabric of memory and a child's relationship to both her birth mother and her father. Just when you think the introspection is where the book will leave off, however, Welty satisfies with some sharp dramatic prose that takes the book full circle. I really enjoyed this novel and its stylistic departures. They gave it a rich and satisfying feel, almost as if the author had said: "Oh, you think you're reading one kind of book. How about this? And that?" I love to read the work of complex literary minds where the heart is in the details. It lends a sort of optimism about what literature does and can do without templates that feel plasticized. :) I'd read this again.
—Heather Fowler
