Isolation in "A Curtain of Green"

Cindy Galderisi

Eudora Welty’s short story, "A Curtain of Green," is about a young widow who has completely isolated herself after her husband’s death. The main character in this story, Mrs. Larkin, uses her garden as a shield to hide her emotions. It is also a physical barrier that keeps her from having to see or connect with the outside world. By using the word "curtain" in the title, Welty suggests that something in this story will be hidden, shielded, or shut-out. In addition to the title, she uses a variety of methods throughout the story to clue the reader in on Mrs. Larkin’s isolation.

One method Welty uses to pinpoint Mrs. Larkin’s isolation is beginning this story from an objective point of view and then changing to a subjective point of view. By doing this, she leaves little doubt that Mrs. Larkin is isolated from the rest of the community. Her isolation is demonstrated by descriptions from the neighbors as well as from Mrs. Larkin’s thoughts.

Welty begins by describing the garden objectively, as seen through the eyes of the neighbors. The garden is described as having a "border of hedge, high like a wall, and visible only from the upstairs windows of the neighbors" (620). She then tells us that Mrs. Larkin "had never once been seen anywhere else since her husband’s accident" (620). Welty continues to describe the garden, with its dense, irregular growth, and she tells us how Mrs. Larkin works all day long in it, only stopping when darkness comes. In spite of this effort the neighbors view Mrs. Larkin’s labors as hasty and without any order or regularity. The garden has an appearance of some sort of jungle that she encouraged rather than an orderly place over which she had control. This evidence suggests that Mrs. Larkin is probably seeking solace in her garden or using it as a way of escaping socializing with her neighbors and others. By working in it continuously she can elude facing her fears and emotions concerning her husband’s death.

After the objective narrative, Welty changes her technique to tell the story from Mrs. Larkin’s subjective point of view. She uses Mrs. Larkin to validate what the neighbors have already implied. Mrs. Larkin is trapped by the memory of her husband’s accidental death. She experiences it over and over again in her mind. She works in the garden continuously in an effort to control her emotions and keep them locked up inside her. By doing so, she does not have to face her own guilt for not having been able to prevent the accident. She works herself to exhaustion during the day so at night she can "lie in bed, her arms tired at her sides and in a motionless peace" (623).

In addition to writing in two different points of view to give the reader a subjective and objective feeling for Mrs. Larkin’s isolation, Eudora Welty also uses the incident with Jamey, the little colored boy, to further describe Mrs. Larkin’s alienation from society. We are told that she can tolerate no one but him and that she can tolerate him only now and then. This implies that although he is the only person she has contact with besides her servant, he means nothing to her. This is further evidenced by the fact that she raises a hoe above his head and contemplates killing him. Welty stops this moment in time, and uses it to further describe Mrs. Larkin’s despair. Mrs. Larkin feels she is helpless, "too helpless to defy the workings of accident, of life, and death, of unaccountability" (622). She continues thinking about "life and death, . . . which now mean nothing to her but which she was compelled continually to wield with both her hands" (622). Mrs. Larkin is truly trapped in despair and isolation. She believes she is responsible in some way for her husband’s death, and is she trapped by the memory of the accident itself.

Using a more subtle technique, Welty gives further evidence that Mrs. Larkin is isolated by not giving her an identity of her own. We are never told what her first name is. She is only presented to us as the wife of Mr. Larkin. The reader is actually given more information about Mr. Larkin’s identity. In one sentence he is pointed out to be the son of the man whom the town was named after. This is more information than we are given concerning Mrs. Larkin’s identity. By not giving her a first name, Welty denies her an individual identity, and, therefore, she can only be known through her husband. When he died, her identity died with him.

In drawing my conclusions about this story, it must be noted that my idea of isolation being the major theme in "A Curtain of Green" was aided by several critiques by other authors. In her book, Eudora Welty; A Study of the Short Fiction, Carol Ann Johnston tells us that "A Curtain of Green" is the title story for a collection of works by Welty which "explores the difficulties for women in a society that, while attempting to shield them from danger, may also subjugate them" (20). I believe Johnson is referring to the fact that during this time frame, most women of Mrs. Larkin’s class were housewives and few had jobs or social lives that extended beyond their husbands. Another critic, Robert Penn Warren, states regarding Welty’s collection of stories, "almost all of the stories deal with people who, in one way or another, are cut off, alienated, isolated from the world" (160).

Other readers of "A Curtain of Green" may come to the conclusion that Mrs. Larkin and her garden represent society as a whole. They may state that the story represents racial segregation and the seclusion that many whites chose to live in because they feared blacks and the changes that would come with desegregation. However, after reading The Eye of the Story, by Eudora Welty, I believe she chooses to write about human emotions and fundamental truths to be interpreted on a more personal level. According to W. Craig Turner and Lee Emling Harding, "She has consistently resisted having her private life invaded for biographical purposes and states that the only important biography is that life which is contained in her works" (Turner 1).

Works Cited/Consulted

Johnston, Carol Ann. Eudora Welty: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997.

Sharp, Ronald A. and Eudora Welty, eds. The Norton Book of Friendship. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1991.

Turner, W. Craig, and Lee Emling Harding, eds. Critical Essays On Eudora Welty. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1969.

Welty, Eudora. "A Curtain of Green." The Literature of the American South. Ed. William L. Andrews. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998. 619-623.

Welty, Eudora. The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews. Vintage Books Edition, 1979.

An Individual or a Universal Story?

Deborah G. Lloyd

Eudora Welty’s short story "A Curtain of Green" seems to be a simple story of a widow who attempts to find meaning in life after witnessing her husband’s accidental death. Most critical works concerning the piece enforce this idea by discussing the work in terms of this individual woman. I’ve found through careful reading, however, that the story shouldn’t be read on an individual level. Rather, "A Curtain of Green" reveals a more universal picture of humanity’s search for meaning during the journey of life.

The story can be read as a documentary of a person who finds the meaning of her life. In the story, Mrs. Larkin begins her day by emerging from her home and venturing into her wild, untamed garden. This can be compared to a baby’s emerging from its mother’s womb to venture out into the big, confusing world. In the story, Mrs. Larkin "would wander about for a little while at first, uncertainly" (620), almost like a child who isn’t certain about the world and begins to stumble around, searching for where she belongs in it. At the end of the day, Mrs. Larkin would "with a drooping, submissive walk" (620) go back into the house, much like a child who doesn’t want to go back inside after a day of play.

The story continues with references to a person’s formative, teenage years. These years bring many changes, fears, and discoveries. One trial during this time in life is that of not fitting in with peers and having people not understand one’s ambitions. Such can be seen with Mrs. Larkin’s relationship with her neighbors. In the story, "the neighbors gazing down from their upstairs window" (620) certainly didn’t feel that Mrs. Larkin was one of them. They didn’t understand her planting "thickly and hastily, without stopping to think" or her ambitions of doing so (620). In keeping with a teenage rebellion, Mrs. Larkin continues doing what makes her happy "without any regard for the ideas [of] her neighbors" (620). In her book, Eudora Welty: Two Pictures at Once in Her Frame, Barbara Harrell Carson confirms this by stating that Mrs. Larkin "stops worrying about what her neighbor’s garden club might consider appropriately harmonious as she begins to move from the world" (32), just as a teenager turns from authority and searches for a place in the world. Even those of us who find ourselves isolated by "strangeness" during those formative years somehow find companionship, and sometimes with the most unlikely people. In the story, Mrs. Larkin has a relationship with Jamey, a young black boy whom she "would tolerate only now and then" (621). Certainly Jamey is the last person who would be expected to share Mrs. Larkin’s world.

When a person gets older he or she begins to realize that there must be more to life than working, paying the bills, raising the kids, and then retiring. Just as one who sits back and ponders this, Mrs. Larkin, during her work, "once raised her head . . . and her eyes were dull . . . as if from long impatience or bewilderment" (621). Like many other people, Mrs. Larkin experiences the bewilderment of wondering if life is supposed to be more fulfilling than it is. Sometimes a person’s wonderment is sparked when his or her life is touched by tragedy. Barbara Harrell Carson says that "the mystery of a natural world that could so senselessly take her husband’s life has driven [Mrs. Larkin] to look for meaning where none seems to exist" (31). Certainly Mrs. Larkin isn’t the only soul who has been prompted to look for meaning in her life after being put face to face with death.

At this point in many people’s lives, they begin to see things differently. After experiencing tragedy they look past their previous ambitions and look instead towards truth and meaning. Once a person discovers that there is indeed something missing in their life, there is a tendency to feel all alone with their newly found view of the world. So Mrs. Larkin "felt all at once terrified, as though her loneliness had been pointed out by some outside force" (Welty 621). It is difficult for a person to carry around the burden of not knowing what she is looking for or even how to find it. She may turn to others and share what has been discovered with hopes of finding resolution, but something so private and individual is difficult for others to understand. It seems sometimes that no one is listening and the person experiences just what Mrs. Larkin experiences when her "voice hardly carried in the dense garden" (Welty 621).

While Mrs. Larkin is still searching for her meaning, Jamey is a person who has found it. Although Jamey is still physically in the garden and is still working in it, much like a person who is still physically living and working in the world, he is "lost in some impossible dream of his own" (Welty 622). A person who has found the meaning that he or she is looking for is able to experience life on a different level as if they are experiencing some wonderful dream because they have peace and resolution. Mrs. Larkin isn’t able to experience this and as a result, she turns violent. Ruth M. Van Kieft, in her book Eudora Welty, suggests that "Jamey’s mindless serenity, his elusive self-possession, his quiet, inaccessible apartness (suggesting his calm acceptance of life) goad her into wonder and fury" (16). Mrs. Larkin, with her burning need for order and predictability, can’t understand how Jamey can experience peace in a world that is so chaotic and unexplainable. It can sometimes be infuriating for a person who is still searching for meaning and peace, and who may feel that they are unattainable, to be around someone who has found them.

Thus a person may be driven to violence. Mrs. Larkin experienced this by holding her hoe above her head and seeing that Jamey had "such a head she could strike off, intentionally" (Welty 622). But just as someone who, in a moment of passion, "wakes up" and realizes what it is that they are searching for, Mrs. Larkin is released from her search and finds her resolution. This happens as Mrs. Larkin has her hoe raised and the rain begins to fall, and there is "the sound of the end of waiting" (Welty 622). It is a moment when a person finds meaning and is embraced with this enlightenment just as "tenderness tore and spun through [Mrs. Larkin’s] . . .body" (Welty 623). With this meaning comes peace and a wisdom about life, death, and the grand scheme of it all; and a person realizes, just as Mrs. Larkin realizes, that "against that which [is] inexhaustible, there [is] no defense" (Welty 623). For those who tirelessly search for meaning, will find it.

At the end of the story, just as at the end of someone’s life, "Mrs. Larkin sank in one motion down into the flowers and lay there fainting and streaked with rain" (Welty 623). Mrs. Larkin becomes part of the earth just as people turn to dust when they die. I disagree with Barbara A. Looney who states that Mrs. Larkin "is unable . . .to move beyond her personal anguish" (584). I believe that Mrs. Larkin, in her own way, does move beyond her anguish and finds a type of resolution in the end, when she realizes that life goes on even after senseless tragedies occur. Most humans have a strength to get through their tragedies and experience peace. The story of Mrs. Larkin’s search can be read as anyone’s search for meaning. Michael Kreyling agrees, stating that in several of the Eudora Welty’s stories, "a main character . . . is universalized, and a point about the nature of individual human existence is made" (459). Indeed, this can be said of "A Curtain of Green." In reading of Mrs. Larkin’s search, readers can see humanity’s search for meaning, as well as perhaps their own.

Works Cited

Carson, Barbara Harrell. Eudora Welty: Two Pictures at Once in Her Frame. New York: The Whitson Publishing Company, 1992.

Kreyling, Michael. Eudora Welty’s Achievement of Order. Louisiana State: Louisiana State UP, 1980. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 22. Michigan: Gale Research Company, 1982.89 vols.

Looney, Barbara A.. Comments on "Eudora Welty." Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson, Detroit: St. James Press, 1994.

VandeKieft. Ruth M. Eudora Welty. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987.

Welty, Eudora. "A Curtain Of Green." The Literature of the American South. Ed. Andrews et. al. New York: Norton, 1998. 619-623

Status and Power in

“Where Is the Voice Coming From?”

Tamara Sarg

Eudora Welty’s short story, “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” is a fictional account of the assassination of black civil rights leader Medgar Evers. The story is narrated by the white assassin and shows how he feels threatened by a perceived loss in social status and the change in power between the races, highlighted by the civil rights movement. Welty provides a host of images and examples illustrating a subtle shift in power between the main characters. With the eventual murder of Evers, named Roland Summers in the story, the narrator attempts to restore his social standing and superiority, based upon what he considers the proper racial hierarchy, and reclaim what little power he can.

The story is set in the Deep South in the 1960’s; we know from the true account that the year is 1963, a time of racial turmoil in the South. Throughout the story, this contrast between the black victim and the white narrator, between the expectations of a white supremacist holding segregationist views and the true aspects of a black man’s life during the burgeoning civil rights era, creates many elements of conflict.

Prior to this era whites held the power. But from the very first lines, Welty shifts the balance of power to the black victim by neglecting to identify the narrator by name but providing a name for the victim. Since the narrator is the main character, he refers to himself, of course, only as “I” or “me.” Yet his wife never calls him by name. The old man selling roasted peanuts never calls him by name. A name provides not only identity but also power, so by naming one character but not the other, Welty transfers the power to the victim.

In a similar manner, the narrator has no identity because he has no face. He has never had his picture taken. “I ain’t ever had one made. Not ever!” (Welty 626). But Summers has been on television and has had his picture in the newspaper. Suzan Harrison points out, “Summers’s image and words are in the papers and on the television, giving him a position of cultural power.” The narrator remains a nameless, faceless element of the masses; the victim is a unique individual with both name and face. Again, the power lies with Summers.

Another way in which Summers has more power than the narrator, is by the fact just mentioned, in which Summers’ picture is on television and in the newspaper.

The narrator believes, in his segregated world, that as a white man he should be the person receiving media coverage. As Harrison notes, “Racial hierarchy controlled media coverage of persons and events in segregated black and white communities.” Neil R. McMillen further states, “Most white newspapers still honored the Jim Crow custom of reporting black news largely only when it involved crime” (qtd. in Harrison). J. Fred MacDonald adds, “African-Americans generally were excluded from Television except in those derisive representations created by whites that trivialized, belittled, and otherwise condemned them to an inferior social status” (qtd. in Harrison). Yet the narrator finds the opposite to be true; he remains anonymous, never receiving credit in the newspaper or on television. Summers receives all the media attention, although not for crime-related activities, but rather as a catalyst for social change. This inverted scenario is a threat to the narrator’s sense of superiority and place in the world.

The narrator struggles to maintain his superiority in a world where he, as a white man, seems to be beneath the social status of a black man. Nancy D. Hargrove points out that “Maintaining segregation is essential to him, for it is one, indeed perhaps the only, means by which he can feel superior; he fears equality for blacks, for that threatens his own meager sense of self-worth” (84). Welty provides many examples in which the narrator does not measure up to his black victim.

First, the narrator believes he is beneath Summers since the narrator does not own a vehicle, but Summers has a “new white car” (Welty 624). While it is only implied that the narrator does not own a vehicle, two references do seem to make this true. First, the narrator walks through town. The narrator comments, “That pavement in the middle of Main Street was so hot to my feet I might’ve been walking the barrel of my gun. If the whole world could’ve just felt Main Street this morning through the soles of my shoes…” (Welty 627). If it truly was that hot, it would seem the narrator would drive his vehicle if he had one, rather than burn the soles of his shoes.

Second, there are three references to his brother-in-law’s truck, which the narrator uses to drive to the murder scene: “That was me going by in my brother-in-law’s truck”; “And there’s my brother-in-law’s truck”; and, he “pull[ed] Buddy’s truck up safe” (Welty 624-626). The narrator comments three times on the truck, enough to suggest this is a sore point for him: he does not own a vehicle, but his black victim does. In the narrator’s world, this is topsy-turvy. White men own the finer things in life, not black men. This is a threat to the narrator’s understanding of the social order and his superiority in the world.

In the same way, other aspects of the victim’s life intimidate the narrator. Summers not only has a car, but a garage to park it in. Summers lives on a paved street and has a paved driveway. Summers has “mighty green” grass (Welty 625), and enough money to pay a water bill and electric bill. The narrator notices these trappings of success and comments on them, indicating he does not have these things. No car, no garage, possibly no paved street. Hargrove asserts, “His concern with the paving implies on its own that he resents Roland’s having…amenities” (84). No driveway either, much less a paved one, for the narrator pulls the borrowed truck “up safe in our front yard” (Welty 626). It is not likely the narrator has nice green grass since he was willing to park the truck there. Again, these details turn the narrator’s world upside down. As Charles Clerc notes, “The white side of town is the wrong side. The white man comes from a place that is arid, sterile, desiccated. The black side signifies fruitfulness, growth, fecundity, symbolically the summer side…. The white envies the black because he is better off” (394). All this is in opposition to what the narrator believes to be true – even if he is poor, a black man should be poorer. This is a threat to any sense of superiority the narrator has.

Another way in which the narrator feels threatened in his social standing and the power he has in his life, is reflected in the comparisons between the narrator and Summers, and their respective wives. The narrator’s wife is very critical and seems uncaring towards him. When he returns home after the murder, he complains to his wife “You didn’t even leave a light burning when you went to bed” (Welty 626). Not only does she not care enough to wait up for him, she doesn’t leave a light on for him to find his way. By contrast, the narrator notices that Summers’ wife has left the garage light shining for him, and she has waited up to welcome him home. “I doubt she’d been to sleep…it seemed to me she’d been in there keeping awake all along” (Welty 625). Summers seemingly has some power over his wife, for whether it was the power of love which makes his wife wait up or a direct order from Summers, the fact is that she does wait for him. The narrator, however, has no such power, and he recognizes once again how the power has shifted to his black victim.

As can be seen, the narrator recognizes, using his frame of reference, how Summers seems to have more power and a higher social status than he does. In the world the narrator knows, there is a racial hierarchy: whites are better than blacks. White men own homes, live on paved streets, and own vehicles. Black men do not. In the world he knows, there is a hierarchy of power; whites are powerful, blacks are powerless. White men run their homes, control their wives, are written up in the newspaper. Black men have none of that same power. But the narrator recognizes in “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” that what he knows is changing. The changes brought to the forefront by the rise of the civil rights movement are altering the landscape of his world. That very change intimidates him, and he resorts to murder to remove these threats to his social status, superiority, and power, and restore his world to one in which he again rules.

Works Cited

Clerc, Charles. “Anatomy of Welty’s ‘Where Is the Voice Coming From?’” Studies in Short Fiction 23.4 (1986): 389-400.

Hargrove, Nancy D. “Portrait of an Assassin: Eudora Welty’s ‘Where Is the Voice Coming From?’” Southern Literary Journal 20.1 (1987): 74-88.

Harrison, Suzan. “‘It’s Still a Free Country’: Constructing Race, Identity, and History in Eudora Welty’s ‘Where Is the Voice Coming From?’” The Mississippi Quarterly 50.4 (Fall 1997): 631-646. Online.

Welty, Eudora. “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” The Literature of the American South. Ed. Andrews, William L., et al. New York: Norton, 1998: 624-628.

Work Consulted

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1988.