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Sure!

I copied each link from Youtube and pasted them below into their reading schedule from this year. Hopefully each of those will work, even if you have to cut and paste. (The info about joining the ongoing, online Welty bookclub is at the bottom.) Thanks for following up, Andy

The Optimist's Daughter Recordings:

Week 1 – January 23: Background + Part One (883-910) RECORDING : https://youtu.be/_yF1FPEb3HI

Week 2 – January 30: Part Two (911-945) RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/gywH7714C_Y

Week 3 – February 6: Part Three (946-978) RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/ytVS9-LXmxs

Week 4 – February 13: Part Four (978-992) RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/rZk1FRxmyNg

Week 5 – *OFF Monday, February 20*

Week 6 – February 27: Discussion of the novel as a whole RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/jrCeZzg0jzU

Week 7 – March 6: The New Yorker version, Sections One & Two RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/4QD9OzhLikE

Week 8 – March 13: The New Yorker version, Sections Three & Four RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/VQDVPa3tcHI

Our next novel is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, beginning in May. We will send the reading schedule and Zoom link within the next few weeks. If you know people who might be interested in joining us, please have them email info@eudoraweltyhouse.com to be added to this email list.

Thank you again for being part of the Welty at Home Book Club!

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Is Laurel perhaps realistic when she burns her mother's papers & leaves the bread board? The path of her life has already taken her in a direction that is far from home. It does not seem the removal from home is all of her own making but she is already removed from home in a way that is irrevocable. Reading about such rootedness to place is fascinating as for generations my own family has moved across the country & back. I could never point to a hometown nor could my family for about 5 generations.

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I realize this probably won't come up in the Q&A Episode, but a few questions are on my mind. Why does Becky say, "You could have saved your mother's life. But you stood by and wouldn't intervene. I despair for you." Is it just the fear and despair as her mind is going, the paranoia that people are taking advantage of her instead of helping her? Or are we supposed to read more into it? Another question is just speculation. Do the Judge and Becky have a happy marriage? Does Laurel wish she could emulate them and their memories together? I can't quite picture a man choosing Fay after having a Becky unless the portrait we see in Laurel's mind is not quite true of Becky.

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Is going home ever the same after you leave, or after an event like those in the book? Is it because home is not the same, or you are not the same, or both? Passage on pg. 112: "Once you leave after this, you'll always come back as a visitor." Mrs. Pease warned Laurel. "Feel free, of course - but it was always my opinion that people don't really want visitors."

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Rabia asks about the recurring mention of time and clocks in the discussion of parts one and two. I too am curious about what you think of these recurrences.

Not far from the end, when Laura wanted her father and mother near her to share in her grief “as she had been the sharer of theirs,” we find what may have been Laurel’s thoughts (free indirect style?):

“As he lay unmoving in the hospital he had concentrated utterly on time passing, indeed he had. But which way had it been going for him? When he could no longer get up and encourage it, push it forward, had it turned on him, started moving back the other way?”

Many mysterious allusions to Time, clocks, in the book.

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What is the significance of Judge McKelva's profession & title being what it was?

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I can't help but think that there is some kind of play on the old adage: Justice is blind.

Doesn't make sense in context of the story, but isn't it kind of funny?

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Hi beloved hosts, I was wondering if you could tackle this one particular passage on page 152:

Fay had once at least called Becky "my rival." Laurel thought: But the rivalry doesn't lie where Fay thinks. It's not between the living and the dead, between the old wife and the new; it's between too much love and too little. There is no rivalry as bitter; Laurel had seen its work.

Does that mean that Becky was the one who loved the Judge too much and Fay had loved him too little? Or does it mean something greater. Does it mean that Becky knew how to truly love not just her husband, but the whole of life? She loved her father, mother, brothers. (Contrast with Fay's family.) She loved baking bread. It seems she loved Phil. She loved gardens. Her love language seemed to be "acts of service" while Fay isn't really seen as serving anyone other than herself. And yet... Becky does not die in peace. I feel like she died in defeat... did the Judge have too little love? How does optimism keep one from truly loving someone?

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From an Amazon review of the letters of Welty and William Maxwell:

Perhaps we'll be captivated by correspondence from the late 1960s, in which Welty considered titles other than "The Optimist's Daughter" for the story that ran in The New Yorker in March 1969 (and, in novel form, won the Pulitzer Prize four years later). On this matter, for instance, Maxwell responded: "I am still partial to `The Optimist's Daughter', because, by its ironic tone, it suggests a certain distance between the writer and the woman in the story, and because it also, again by its irony, suggests, matches, somehow, the full horror of the subject matter....Also, I like titles that don't state the idea of the thing but are more oblique."

I wonder what Maxwell means by "the full horror of the subject matter"? Horror seems a strong word for Fay's getting the house. Is there something more gothic going on?

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In the podcast, you pointed out that we're not exactly sure if Laurel is interpreting things correctly. Is Adele potentially our voice of reason and true assessment? If so, what do we make of her claim that the townspeople behaved just as poorly as the Chisoms at the funeral?

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In this story does "optimistic" really mean "avoidant"? The Judge seems to never really come to terms with Becky's illness. "That was when he started, of course, being what he scowlingly called an optimist.... He loved his wife. Whatever she did that she couldn't help doing was all right."

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Broad question ... Does learning that plot elements and characters bear degrees of resemblance to a novelist's life in any way diminish aspects of that novel for readers or the creative accomplishment of that novel? I lean toward no but I am not sure I am convincing myself entirely. I've watched recorded installments of a Eudora-Welty-Home-and-Museum-originated book group from 2/2023 on Youtube wherein an old friend of hers and scholar of her work (Dr. Suzanne Marrs) leads the group through a discussion of each chapter of The Optimist's Daughter. The more and more she shares how closely some aspects of The Optimist's Daughter reflect events from Welty's life, the more I've been asking myself. (And if the author's great friend and scholar loves the novel despite knowing the direct correlations...) I'm not suggesting that this turns a great novel into one without greatness or that it diminishes the quality of the prose. Does it do the reader any good to learn these sorts of things or does it distract or take us out of the experience in a way? Does it depend on the degree or the circumstances? Do I need to just relax? : ) I can certainly respect that writing a grief memoir could be too raw or close whereas a novel a slight distance removed on the same themes could be therapeutic. Anyway, just taking my first leap into the Substack pool.

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I realize there have already been numerous questions about the symbolism of birds in this novel, but I have yet one more. In Book 3, at the very end of the first chapter/subsection, Laurel and Adele observe the cardinals flying directly at the “bird-frighteners” one at a time, over and over. Adele remarks, “Oh, it’s a game, isn’t it, nothing but a game!” I’m pretty sure she isn’t just talking about cardinals here, and I have my ideas about what the failure of the bird-frighteners to frighten means, as well as what the game Adele refers to is, but I would love to hear your thoughts on this passage.

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And I wonder what happens to Missouri. I can't picture her working for Fay or Fay keeping her on.

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founding

He was the same doctor that operated on Laurel's mother and that was a disaster, right? That's what I was reading into that situation.

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And another question. What are we to make of the fact that the Judge and Becky both died of (or with) eye ailments? And how should we interpret Becky's bitterness to the Judge at the end of her life? Finally, what does Laurel mean when she tells Fay that Becky predicted her?

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founding

Can you please talk about Ms. Adel? I find it significant that she insists Laurel keep that little boat that represents her parents' love, and is the one not judging Fay, and is the teacher of the children. She gives me hope, but maybe I'm too optimistic?

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Is Fay an Inverse of Livvie?

I just read Welty's 1942 short story from the Atlantic Monthly, "Livvie is Back." It tells the story of Livvie, a black girl who is married at 16 to Solomon, a successful farmer of 60 who has built himself in the lonely woods a three room house that functions as a pyramid to his own respectability. After a while, Solomon begins to weaken and fade. He takes to his bed and mostly sleeps. Livvie is the model of a dutiful wife. She prepares meals for him, which he does not eat. Still, she tries. Although Solomon has treated her well, he has kept her virtually a prisoner. And when the inevitable younger man shows up (when Livvie is 24), Solomon wakes up and acknowledges his sin in taking Livvie to live in isolation.

There are parallels with Fay and the Judge. Livvie in effect asks with Robert Burns, "What Can A Young Lassie Do Wi' An Auld Man?" There is no pleasing the moribund Solomon. Fay learns that there is no pleasure with the judge. Livvie wants to be a good wife (as she understands it) and Fay wants a good marriage (as she understands it). The double-bind is that in "Livvie" we are saddened by her dutifulness. (Even though we probably do not root for a union with the young man.) And we are outraged by Fay's lack of dutifulness. So we do not approve of either option. Fay is too selfish. Livvie is too obedient. We cannot advise Fay to be like Livvie, can we? Then what is left, given the bad bargain the judge has made with her? Perhaps Fay is a woman more sinned against than sinning?

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founding

Although you didn't include my original post, I am going to repeat the question... why was Fay not charged for homicide in the death of the judge. She brutally mistreated him when he was supposed to be immobilized after eye surgery; she would have denied him surgery if given the opportunity.

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Curious to hear your thoughts on two points:

1) Why is Fay such a tiny person when her mother and sister are so large? Is it just that their overbearing nature/nurture has shrunk Fay’s humanity?

2) Do you think Welty gives any clues as to how Laurel’s life will change, if at all, when she returns to Chicago as a “free bird”? It is almost as if she has just reached adulthood after processing the tragedy of loss in Father, Mother and Husband. She seems so bleakly alone. Do you think Welty gives us hope for new relationships in her life?

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Was Adele in love with the judge? There are definitely hints that she’s lived her life with unrequited love for him. Perhaps she hoped to marry him when they were young, and again after Becky’s death? Or am I completely misinterpreted that?

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I’m wondering about Major Bullock and his role as essentially the only man who plays a part in the story. Is he just a silly man or are his feelings of sympathy toward Fay more insightful than we give credit for? I’m leaning toward silly myself because nothing compels me to feel any sympathy for Fay.

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I couldn't get a solid grasp on Laurel's relationship to her father. On page 144, she thinks, "neither of us saved our fathers". Did her relationship to her father suffer when she married her husband? When her mother died? Interested in your alls thoughts.

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I got the impression there was some history about the eye doctor and Becky's death. Why does he not want to do the operation on the judge? Did he mess up before? Then why does the judge insist that he has full confidence in the doctor? I am not sure about any of this, yet I do get the feeling that Welty is hinting at something in the past that may or may not matter in the present. Any of this ring any bells?

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’m curious still about the attraction Fay had for Judge McKelva, and indeed that she seems to have for men in general. I know we get some hints about what would attract someone like the Judge to her, but I still don’t feel like I was given “good enough” reasons for it. Major Bullock (I hope that’s the right name!) also seemed to feel some sort of fascination/attraction/pity for her, while every woman in the novel can’t stand her. What is it about Fay that attracts men such that they don’t see the repellant qualities that the women around them dislike about her? In addition, do the women dislike her for the “right reasons” (such as her narrowness of soul) vs “wrong reasons” (jealousy, class prejudice, dislike of her simply because she’s a replacement)?

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What is the significance of birds throughout the novel? Are they meant to mirror the emotional state of the characters (as weather would in a gothic novel) or is there some deeper significance? I'm thinking specifically of (1) the mockingbird while the bridesmaids are giving their review of the funeral (page 110), (2) The cardinals attacking Becky's bird frighteners while the ladies are gossiping about Fay (page 117 ish), and (3) the bird that flits throughout the house during Laurel's cleaning of the house (page 132 ish). It seems like the author never explicitly describes what the characters are feeling, especially Laurel whose perspective we're looking out from and who we would expect to have a lot of complicated emotions during this time. Are we supposed to infer her emotions from the birds and, if so, what's the significance of birds specifically as an emotional outlet?

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I found this novel extremely tightly written; knowing it was a former short story expanded into novel length helped sort it in my mind. But I found the beginning of part 3 nearly superfluous to the rest of the novel. Am I missing something deeper in the chatter of the women of their town surrounding Laurel for what feels like a lot of pages in this short of a book? (The other extended dialogue scene of Faye's family makes sense, but for some reason this part felt like an outlier.)

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I have so many questions. I have read and listened to Part 4 over and over again. Here's a start: we don't know anything about Laurel except her relationships with her parents and husband. Nothing about her life in Chicago except that she is a fabric designer. We don't know if she has friends, whether she dates and thinks about marrying again, why she continued to live in Chicago after her husband's death. Why? We don't really know what she is returning to at the end of the book.

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