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Special Edition—Spring-Summer 1998

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MCCCWC entry—literary essay division

The Fairchild Family

by Debra Stamps

Eudora Welty, the author of Delta Wedding, creatively unfolds this story through the overheard thoughts of the Fairchild family members. The large family deals with a multitude of intrapersonal and interpersonal issues which focus on both the unity and the conflict within the family institution and individual. This novel does not focus on one person, place, or thing. The Fairchild family deals with reality, and the author tells the story through the voices of the entire family.

In the critical essay "Fairchild as Composite Protagonist," M.E. Bradford states, "No one tells this story--and yet, everyone does, with only a little help from the author" (201).

Over the generations the Fairchild dynasty has evolved into a private society, so "In this respect, Fairchild is not only a family, but the family" (Prenshaw 202). The family's thoughts concerning the invasive outsiders are opinionated and judgmental. The Fairchilds are protected by a self-made boundary that secures them from the outside world, for "all together we have a wall, we are self-sufficient against people that come up knocking, we are solid to the outside" (Bradford 202). Throughout this novel one discovers the family members often consider themselves as outsiders. Ellen, the wife of Battle Fairchild, is a twenty-year outsider member of this dynasty and knows the frustration of trying to become one of the Fairchilds. Robbie, the wife of George Fairchild, is an embarrassment to the family and will always be considered an outsider. Troy, the outsider-to-be, is judged as unsuitable marriage material for Dabney. And little Laura, the orphaned Fairchild, is treated as if she does not exist. The sight of Laura brings back memories of her mother, and the memories bring pain. In this story one has the opportunity to experience a family dealing with its own world in its own way. The novel Delta Wedding shares a family's struggle with conflict and compassion within the family unit, within the individual, and within the outsiders trying to penetrate the family's secure boundary.

The wedding is held at Shellmound, the home of the bride Dabney Fairchild. Battle and Ellen Fairchild, their eight children, two aunts, Laura McRaven, Mary Mackay, Maureen, and a number of black servants all live under the Shellmound roof. Aunt Primrose and Aunt Jim Allen live at the Grove, the second plantation home, where they are surrounded by a museum quality history of the family. Dabney's wedding gift is Maruman, the third plantation home. The extravagant wedding gift enables the Fairchild family to keep Dabney inside their boundary, and the gift provides the family with control over the outsider, Troy.

Through the thoughts of Laura McRaney, one senses the power and the privilege of being one of the Fairchild family members. Laura's mother, a Fairchild by birth, died a year earlier. Laura, nine years old, travels alone to the exclusive Fairchild plantation for her cousin Dabney Fairchild's wedding. Since her mother's death, Laura needs the reassurance of her place in the family. The Fairchild clan has a power that Laura cannot define. When she arrives in Fairchilds, Mississippi, the younger members of the family meet Laura at the train station. She quietly observes her cousins for a moment, "for these cousins were in reality the sensations of life and they knew it---things waited for them to appear, laughing and amazed, in order to happen...." (Kreyling 55). Their world is protected from reality by a boundary inherited with the Fairchild name, and Laura is a little girl who needs to know she has a place inside the boundary. Laura is intuitive and intelligent, and she soon discovers the family's exclusive world does not include her. Laura's original excitement about staying at Shellmound quickly changes, for now "'Shellmound' sounded more convincing with the added attitude, 'self-protected isolation and snobbery.' These facts continued to reinforce the discrimination the Fairchilds held against outsiders" (Vandi Kieft 109). The novel ends when Laura is invited to live at Shellmound and to be one of the family. Laura is reassured of a place in her mother's family, and the reader is left with the feeling that Laura will return to her father and the real world.

Dabney is more concerned with the consequences to her marriage than the wedding preparations. She knows her family disapproves of Troy Flavin as husband material. Dabney fears the price she will pay for the betrayal will be more than she can bear. The Fairchild family do not invite outsiders in nor do they allow a Fairchild out, for it is like a "...game that is Fairchild, all members may sue for readmission and rejoin the handholding circle of corporate affection, the self contained universe where they truly existed" (Bradford 206). Troy is an outsider. He has been raised deep in the backwoods, and he is an employee of the Fairchilds. Considering Troy's background and lack of social standing, "Dabney believes at times that she is betraying Fairchild in 'marrying down' " (Prenshaw 203). Dabney is aware that her father does not want her to go. She also knows one cannot escape being a Fairchild, but Dabney wants her freedom. Before the wedding she reflects on how protected she has been up until now, and Dabney feels the marriage will give her the freedom to face the real world.

George Fairchild is the only family member in touch with reality, and he appears to be a knight in shining armor. Everyone is drawn to George. George has separated himself from the clan by moving away from the dynasty, and he has learned to differentiate the family members from the family as a whole. In the critical essay "The Function of Taste in the Fiction of Eudora Welty," Thomas H. Landess states, "Though the point of view is parcelled out among several chapters, and never given to its hero, George Fairchild, he is the person in the novel who has best mastered the related arts of seeing and loving" (529). George's life had taken on a new meaning when he met the love of his life Robbie Reid. He had stepped over the boundary, defied the Fairchilds, and married Robbie, and "Robbie Reid, whom the family wisely regard as a far greater threat to insularity of their world even than Troy, is foreign as a native of the town of Fairchilds, as distinguished from the plantation!" (Hardy 30). Before Robbie's marriage to George she was a clerk at Fairchilds, the family's store. It isn't as embarrassing for Dabney to marry Troy because his background isn't well known, and Troy has been quick in learning to imitate Battle's every move. Battle will quickly move Troy up the ladder of success, whereas Robbie is a local girl whose background is impossible to hide. Robbie refuses to conform to the Fairchild traditions, she is an unfit wife for the glorious George, and she has been a life long neighbor. The dislike between Robbie and the family is mutual. Aunt Mac criticizes Robbie and Robbie strikes back: " 'Aunt Mac Fairchild!' said Robbie, 'You're all spoiled, stuck-up family that thinks nobody else is really in the world! But they are!'" (Kreyling 67). Robbie is possessive and jealous, and George's family is equally possessive and jealous. Robbie is the ultimate outsider that the family loves to hate.

Ellen Fairchild is the one with the unspoken power: "At the center of the busy household at Shellmound, she watches unobtrusively, intuitively, tenderly, all the developing persons and relationships about her, missing nothing" (Landess 530). Ellen has cared for Shellmound and the Fairchild family for the past twenty years. She knows the flaws and the qualities of the clan. She is aware the family accepts her for her loyalty, but "Yankees, of course, are unthinkable; but Ellen, the Virginian, is acutely conscious all of her life of her difference from the Delta family she mothers" (Hardy 30). She has acquired some of the Fairchild snobbery in the past twenty years, and Ellen fears Dabney is making a mistake by marrying Troy. The wedding is instrumental in making Ellen remember how outsiders are looked upon and how great a price an outsider pays to be part of the Fairchild family. She begins a search for the Ellen and the forgotten feelings she lost some twenty years earlier.

The protagonist of Delta Wedding is the Fairchild family. A complexity of boundaries is found within each family member and encircling the Fairchild family as a whole. These boundaries hold the family in a somewhat balanced world, and an outsider's intrusion into their world threatens the balanced security. Little Laura, Ellen, and Robbie are all aware of the price and privilege of being an outsider Fairchild. Troy is the outsider unaware of the price he will pay for inclusion in the Fairchild family. Through the overheard thoughts, the Fairchild family reveals "A fire burns within each of us revealing the war with nature and nurture" (Van Kieft 110).

Bradford, M.E. "Fairchild as Composite Protagonist in Delta Wedding." Mississippi Quarterly 26 (Fall 1973): 201-207.

Hardy, John H. "Delta Wedding as Region and Symbol." Modern Critical Reviews: Eudora Welty. Ed. Harold Bloom.

     New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Landess, Thomas H. "The Function of Taste in the Fiction of Eudora Welty." Mississippi Quarterly 26 (Fall 1973):

     529-540.

Kreyling, Michael. "Finding a Style: 'The Delta Cousins' into Delta Wedding." Eudora Welty's Achievement of Order.

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1980.

Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman. Eudora Welty: Thirteen Critical Essays. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1979.

Vandi Kieft, Ruth M. Eudora Welty. New York: Twayne, 1987.