The Fairchild Family In Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding

The Fairchild family has a hard time letting new people into their circle, but will Troy Flavin be able to change that? Many of Ms. Welty’s sto­ries fea­ture strong women, how­ever fem­i­nist schol­ars shunned them due to neg­a­tive com­ments she made in the 1970s about the fem­i­nist movement. The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy. In Delta Wedding, by Eudora Welty, Laura McRaven was a motherless girl, going to her cousin Dabneys wedding at the Fairchild families house without her father. She is brought to a home that consisted of many family members, with an especially large amount of cousins. While she is a part of the family, because of her mother's passing everyone seems to avoid

As Laura reunites with everyone, she describes the members of the Fairchild family as a distant outsider, rather than if she had known them closely her entire life. “They looked with shining eyes upon their kin, and all their abundance of love, as if it were devilment, was made reckless and inspired or was belittled in fun, though never, so far, was it said out. They had never told Laura they loved her,” (Pg. 19). Laura watched the way the children acted, and the way they were treated. She seemed as though she were jealous that they had the life she could’ve had if her mother were still alive. As the family talked with one another, they showed love, but when it came to Laura love was not near. Later in the novel, the Fairchild children began expressing their thoughts on Dabney marrying Troy Flavin. Troy was an outcast to the Fairchild family, and as he is brought into the home more, the Fairchilds push him further away. The young cousins of the family feel as if he is going to take Dabney away for good. “She's never coming back,” (pg. 121). Ranny and Bluett say this as they cry. This shows how close the family is, and why marriage is not always something a close family