The Optimist's Daughter-Eudora Welty
She felt it might have been the hardest thing he had done all day, or all his life. (42)
She wanted to go to the clock and take the key from where her father kept it-on a small nail he'd hammered, a little crookedly, into the papered wall-and wind the clock and set it going at the right time. But she could not spare the moment from his side. She felt as though in death her father had been asked to bear the weight of that raised lid himself, and hold it up by lying there, the same way he'd lain on the hospital bed and counted the minutes and the hours to make his life go by. She stood by the coffin as she had sat by his bed, waiting it out with him. (73)
The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought. (81)
"What's happening isn't real," Laurel said, low.
"The ending of a man's life on earth is very real indeed," Miss Adele said.
"But what people are saying."
"They're trying to say for a man that his life is over. Do you know a good way?"
Here, helpless in his own house among the people he'd known, and who'd known him, since the beginning, her father seemed to Laurel to have reached at this moment the danger point of his life. (82)
The top of the hill ahead was crowded with winged angels and life-sized effigies of bygone citizens in old-fashioned dress, standing as if by count among the columns and shafts and conifers like a familiar set of passengers collected on deck of a ship, on which they all knew each other-bona-fide members of a small local excursion, embarked on a voyage that is always returning in dreams. (89)
"Oh, Laurel can do anything. If it's been made hard enough for her," said Miss Adele. "Of course she can give up Mount Salus and say goodbye to this house and to us, and the past, and go on back to Chicago day after tomorrow, flying a jet. And take up one more time where she left off." (113)
...one deep feeling called by its right name names others. (132)
She loyally reproached her mother for yielding to the storms that began coming to her out of her darkness of vision. Her mother had only to recollect herself! As for her father, he apparently needed guidance in order to see the tragic. (145)
Then when he'd come home, her father would stand helpless in bewilderment by his wife's bed. Spent, she had whispered, "Why did I marry a coward?"-then had taken his hand to help him bear it.
Later still, she had began to say-and her voice never weakened, never harshened, it was her spirit speaking in the wrong words-"All you do is hurt me. I wish I might know what it is I've done. Why is it necessary to punish me like this and not tell me why?" And still she held fast to their hands, to Laurel's too. Her cry was not complaint; it was anger at wanting to know and being denied knowledge; it was love's deep anger. (148)
It's our turn! she'd thought exultantly. And we're going to live forever.(160)
For her life, any life, she had to believe, was nothing but the continuity of its love. (160)
But of course, Laurel saw, it was Fay who did not know how to fight. For Fay was without any powers of passion or imagination in herself and had no way to see it or reach it in the other person. Other people, inside their lives, might as well be invisible to her. (178)
The past is like him, impervious, and can never be awakened. It is memory that is the somnambulist. It will come back in its wounds from across the world, calling us by our names and demanding its rightful tears. It will never be impervious. The memory can be hurt, time and again-but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it's vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due. (179)
She wanted to go to the clock and take the key from where her father kept it-on a small nail he'd hammered, a little crookedly, into the papered wall-and wind the clock and set it going at the right time. But she could not spare the moment from his side. She felt as though in death her father had been asked to bear the weight of that raised lid himself, and hold it up by lying there, the same way he'd lain on the hospital bed and counted the minutes and the hours to make his life go by. She stood by the coffin as she had sat by his bed, waiting it out with him. (73)
The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought. (81)
"What's happening isn't real," Laurel said, low.
"The ending of a man's life on earth is very real indeed," Miss Adele said.
"But what people are saying."
"They're trying to say for a man that his life is over. Do you know a good way?"
Here, helpless in his own house among the people he'd known, and who'd known him, since the beginning, her father seemed to Laurel to have reached at this moment the danger point of his life. (82)
The top of the hill ahead was crowded with winged angels and life-sized effigies of bygone citizens in old-fashioned dress, standing as if by count among the columns and shafts and conifers like a familiar set of passengers collected on deck of a ship, on which they all knew each other-bona-fide members of a small local excursion, embarked on a voyage that is always returning in dreams. (89)
"Oh, Laurel can do anything. If it's been made hard enough for her," said Miss Adele. "Of course she can give up Mount Salus and say goodbye to this house and to us, and the past, and go on back to Chicago day after tomorrow, flying a jet. And take up one more time where she left off." (113)
...one deep feeling called by its right name names others. (132)
She loyally reproached her mother for yielding to the storms that began coming to her out of her darkness of vision. Her mother had only to recollect herself! As for her father, he apparently needed guidance in order to see the tragic. (145)
Then when he'd come home, her father would stand helpless in bewilderment by his wife's bed. Spent, she had whispered, "Why did I marry a coward?"-then had taken his hand to help him bear it.
Later still, she had began to say-and her voice never weakened, never harshened, it was her spirit speaking in the wrong words-"All you do is hurt me. I wish I might know what it is I've done. Why is it necessary to punish me like this and not tell me why?" And still she held fast to their hands, to Laurel's too. Her cry was not complaint; it was anger at wanting to know and being denied knowledge; it was love's deep anger. (148)
It's our turn! she'd thought exultantly. And we're going to live forever.(160)
For her life, any life, she had to believe, was nothing but the continuity of its love. (160)
But of course, Laurel saw, it was Fay who did not know how to fight. For Fay was without any powers of passion or imagination in herself and had no way to see it or reach it in the other person. Other people, inside their lives, might as well be invisible to her. (178)
The past is like him, impervious, and can never be awakened. It is memory that is the somnambulist. It will come back in its wounds from across the world, calling us by our names and demanding its rightful tears. It will never be impervious. The memory can be hurt, time and again-but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it's vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due. (179)