Rescripting the Coming-of-Age Narrative in Eudora Welty’s “Moon Lake”

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ See Demmin and Curley, Jones, Mark (Dragon’s), McHaney, Morris, Pitavy-Souques, Pugh, and Schmidt.

² For connections to Milton, see Johnston; for connections to Faulkner, see Jones; for connections to Woolf, see Harrison (Eudora); for connections to Yeats, see McHaney and Pugh.

³ For a full discussion of this paradigm, see Bronfen.

⁴ Characters I am referencing as part of the pattern of submersion (or near-submersion) are Clytie, Hazel, Jenny, Robbie, Dabney, Laura, Partheny, Nina, Easter, Virgie, Gloria, and Delilah. Previous critics have identified smaller segments of this larger pattern. Harrison, for example, has linked the scenes of Laura, Easter, and Virgie (“Other” 61–65), and Weston has compared Virgie and Delilah (77). Other critics have explored Welty’s use of water imagery. Polk identifies the significance of water in Welty’s writing while Costello points out that Welty links “sexuality with water imagery” in The Golden Apples (82).

⁵ All quotes from “Moon Lake” are from the Collected Stories edition, unless otherwise noted.

⁶ See Donaldson for a discussion of how storytelling “confirm[s] the perspective and priorities of the community” (493).

⁷ For more discussion of the status of the orphaned characters in the story, see Balken and Griffith.

⁸ See, for example, McHaney (607) or Kreyling (129).

⁹ Although a black-colored version of cotton existed, it was rare compared to the white cotton grown across the South. A similar color exchange happens in Delta Wedding, when Robbie sees Pinchy outside her shed and imagines her as a “black figure suspended in the light as she would watch a little light that twinkled in the black” (194) reversing, as Ladd points out, the color association, so that black becomes light (545).

¹⁰ This pattern also occurs in Delta Wedding’s portrayal of the lost girl, another lower-class character, raped by the central male character George.

¹¹ Other suicides in Welty’s fiction are Roscoe and possibly Judge McKelva in The Optimist’s Daughter; possibly the Beecham parents in Losing Battles; and Miss Myra and Miss Theo in “The Burning.”

¹² McCright points out that several of the characters in the story are compared to animals, presenting “an equalizing force among the human characters” (80).

¹³ See Marrs (Eudora 452–3).

¹⁴ See Library of America edition (424).

¹⁵ Pugh argues that Easter “transforms Loch’s innocent ‘rape’ into her own action. It is as though it is she who decides when she will rise from death, for Loch must work long on Easter’s immobile and resisting body. She finally accepts his action, but on her own terms” (444). Alternately, Peters argues, “the joining of these male and female bodies is necessary to save Easter’s life, and the power of this union results in Easter’s resurrection, a brutal rebirth into a new awareness of the world” (65).