Essay On Family In Ponder Heart And Delta Wedding

As Laura was feeling excluded at the beginning of Delta Wedding, many chaotic events began to occur in preparations for cousin Dabney’s wedding.The main issue, felt universally throughout the family, was their concern of Dabney marrying her bridegroom Troy Flavin. Troy was seen as being beneath the Fairchilds since they were among elite status in the Mississippi Delta. Before Troy arrived to Shellmound disapproving talk of him had already begun among the large family. Robbie, the wife to Fairchild son George, was previously an employee on the family’s plantation whom no one has accepted as being among their status now. As she engages in conversation with Troy, she becomes surprised and says “Dabney’s marrying--marrying you? You’re the overseer out there” (185). This surprise resonates throughout the family, especially Shelley, one of Dabney’s sisters. Throughout the story Shelley is constantly doubting her sister’s decision to marry Troy. When Troy is late to his wedding rehearsal because he was breaking up a fight among hired hands, Seeing this, Shelley believed she had found “the reason why Dabney’s wedding should be prevented” (258). Even though she saw this, she knew it would not

The normally perceived notion of family is contradicted in The Ponder Heart. Daniel’s idyllic idea of humanity and family is ousted by the betrayals and abandonments he experience from his kin. Welty reveals that humanity is not all good as some think it to be; blood and marriage is not what defines family. In Delta Wedding, Welty reveals what truly defines family: love, loyalty, and forgiveness. As Dabney challenges the idea of who family physically should be by marrying Troy, she proves that he is in fact family because of the amount of love between them. Welty also depicts the true idea of family through Laura feeling accepted and cared for at the end of the