A Companion to the American Short Story
Page 63
and “ come ” enhance the vaguely ominous mood.
The goldenrod, which is the color of Cornella ’ s hair but also a sense - link to the
scepter, suggests that it is to this “ momentary deity ” that Josie would make an offer-
ing of fl owers. In that future time, “ when the wind would fall, ” the momentous change
would be over; and Josie would be an adult who could “ sit in silence ” with her beloved.
The last two sentences of the passage present adult options for her, through the
ambiguous sense - links of nuts and squirrels. She could sit passively, in the face of
male action of cracking nuts; or she could exert control by saving the nuts, thus pre-
venting male violence against something she values. The passage is charged with
sexual politics, and with tension between action and stasis.
At the end of section eleven, in which Josie asks to hold a fur muff (a sexual symbol
also in “ The Bride of the Innisfallen ” ) that has been put away for the summer, her
father gives her a kiss, which triggers a memory that suddenly seems crucial to her.
It is an evening Chautauqua performance that Josie remembers, when Cornella is
across the room, passionately listening to the music. Both girls are entranced by a
young woman who plays a cornet. Josie ’ s fi rst reaction to the memory of that night
is chagrin that she could have forgotten “ what was closest of all. ” What follows is a
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delimiting narrative strategy that can educate the reader about possible meanings. It
is neither Cornella nor the storm that is of greatest signifi cance to Josie but, rather,
her memory of an artist. Refl ecting the story ’ s theme of transition, the music of the
trio of female Chautauqua musicians includes “ a little transition to another key. ”
When the cornetist plays a solo, Josie is as delighted as if “ morning - glories had come
out of the horn. ” The passage is charged not only with positive sexual images – of
Josie ’ s being “ pierced with pleasure ” by the phallic instrument of the cornetist and
“ the striving of the lips ” – but also with negative cultural and narrative implications
from the ideas of “ stale … expect[ations] ” and “ old shelter[s]. ” Heightening the
association between the passionate artist (the cornetist) and Josie ’ s current passion
(Cornella) is the fact that Welty changed the trumpet in the earlier version of the
story, entitled “ Beautiful Ohio, ” to the cornet of “ The Winds ” (Mark, “ Pierced with
Pleasure ” 109 – 10), 8 creating a sound - link between “ Cornella ” and “ cornet ” – perhaps
a transition from one kind of passion to another. The cornetist herself is described in
terms of a humming - bird, a term Welty often employs for her wanderer - artist char-
acters, and which was the basis for the original title of “ The Wanderers, ” the fi nal
story in The Golden Apples . Josie remembers that the cornetist and the traveling show
of memory seemed to lead to “ a destination [that was] being shown her. ” Thus, the
memory helps Josie to re - invent the past in terms of what now seems most important
and to put into perspective her changing life. On the dark sleeping - porch after the
storm, it seems to Josie that “ a proclamation had been made in the last high note of
the lady trumpeteer.
”
Now that she realizes
“
what was closest of all
”
about the
summer, the “ last high note ” of a wandering artist may infl uence the way she responds
to the second “ sign ” – in another kind of note – at the end of the story.
It is revealing to consider the fi nal sections of the story in the light of Wright ’ s idea
of “ fi nal reticence, ” or what Lohafer calls “ preclosure. ” Should Welty have ended “ The
Winds ” after section thirteen, it would have been a far different story. In this brief
section, two claps of thunder bracket the father ’ s clapping of his hands. He then
declares, “ It ’ s over, ” essentially performing a god - like calming of the storm: “ From then
on there was only the calm steady falling of rain. ” Accordingly, the repeated trochees
in “ only, ” “ steady, ” and “ falling ” effect the rhythm of a downbeat. But although Josie ’ s
parents might think she is sleeping, in section fourteen she is actually thinking of
Cornella, of the lady cornetist ’ s lips, and of “ all that was wild and beloved and estranged,
and all that would beckon and leave her, and all that was beautiful. ” Josie is determined
to follow wherever they lead. Had the story ended here, the curve of emotion would
refl ect female openness and anticipation. Poetic scansion of these sentences reveals a
wild mixture of predominately upbeat iambs and dancing trisyllabic metric feet, for
example, “ outside/was all/that was wild/and beloved/and estranged. ” Yet both of these
“ false endings, ” which are feasible options, prepare the reader ’ s expectations, only to
have them altered by the actual closure. In fact, they do the reader a service. As Lohafer
explains, “ It ’ s a common strategy. The false ending highlights the true ending, isolat-
ing what we mean by resolution, by fulfi llment of design, by the achievement of a
vantage point from which the whole story reveals its contour and point. ” 9
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287
In the fi nal section it is morning, but the night has left a mysterious second sign
for Josie to fi nd: a fragmentary note with the name Cornella on it, including the
message: “ O my darling … when are you coming for me? ” This ending so mystifi ed
early readers that Welty,
“
astonished,
”
explained it to her agent:
“
Maybe by its
coming exactly at the end, it acquired a special obscurity. I wanted it to balance the
whole story … (which concerned the commonplace & specifi ed longing & grief to
come) ” ( Kreyling , Author and Agent 70). Thus, the actual closure brings neither the
reassurance of a child ’ s security in her family nor the unchecked, promiscuous joy of
youthful anticipation. Instead, it offers a cautionary note. Both positive and negative
images in the story ’ s closure attest to the reality of an ordinary day, which is full of
signs for one who can see: a sunny day but, after the storm, bedraggled leaves on the
trees. Neither has human nature changed, for her brother is still “ digging in his old
hole to China. ” Josie ’ s coming of age is affi rmed, but in troubling images. Cornella ’ s
house now “ looked as if its old age had come upon it at last. ” The most important
sign, the note, suggests the possibility that Cornella ’ s future life could read like what
Nancy K. Miller calls, in the eighteenth - century novel, a “ heroine ’ s text ” ; 10 thus, it
offers Josie an altered – less enticing – view of Cornella, as a heroine who waits pas-
sively for a hero, who may not come, or if he comes may expect her to accept a
prescribed role. The reader should heed two details that limit critical interpretation
of the story: that Josie ’ s memory of the cornetist supersedes, in her mind, that of
Cornella; and that the memory includes Josie ’ s sense that her coming of age means
that waiting is over. The curve of Josie ’ s emotion – rising and falling, racing and
pausing, as she heeds and selects from her memory – has decreed the aesthetic struc-
ture of the story.
The Voice of the Storyteller in “ Music from Spain ”
The lyric voice of the storyteller often connects with the aesthetic structure of the
short story through narrative frames, in which there are tellers and listeners, and
sometimes stories within stories. The short story corresponds to the ancient lyric – the
song of one singer (one lyre) – as the teller corresponds to that very subjective ancient
singer. Crucial to the short story ’ s form and content is its focus on the very nature of
storytelling and, thus, on the voice of the one who tells: who stands apart, observes,
and “ sings. ” Frank O ’ Connor has famously described this teller as “ the lonely voice ”
in his book of that title. Elizabeth Bowen imagines the storyteller on a “ stage which,
inwardly, every man is conscious of occupying alone. ” Wendell Harris notes that the
short story ’ s essence is “ to portray the individual person, or moment, or scene in isola-
tion … [and is thus] the natural vehicle for the presentation of the outsider, but also
for the moment whose intensity makes it seem outside the ordinary stream of time
… or outside our ordinary range of experience. ” Welty, who creates both outsider
characters and extraordinary moments, explains the organic connection between the
alienated speaker (content) and narrative obstruction (style), in her comments on
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Ruth D. Weston
Hemingway ’ s “ Indian Camp ” : Hemingway ’ s “ obscuring and at the same time reveal-
ing ” use of dialogue in the story, she says, is the result of his wishing to show that
“ something is broken in two; language slips, meets a barrier, a shadow is inserted
between the speakers. ” 11
In spite of the ancient concepts of lyric (subjective) and dramatic (objective) modes
as separate and distinct, and of Welty ’ s belief that a short story usually is lyrical, she
also sees story writing in terms of drama; and, indeed, her fi ction is often adapted for
stage or fi lm. 12 She achieves a confl uence of the lyric and the dramatic in many ways,
in both short stories and novels, especially through the lonely voice of the outsider.
Some of these lonely voices are the fi rst - person narrators of “ Why I Live at the P.O., ”
“ Circe, ” and The Ponder Heart ; others are the multiple voices in near - total dialogue
narratives, such as “ Lily Daw and the Three Ladies, ” “ Petrifi ed Man, ” “ Powerhouse, ”
and Losing Battles . In “ Shower of Gold, ” Katie Rainey, although an emotional outsider
in her community, supplies a communal point of view that has an effect similar to
that of the fi rst - person - plural narrator in Faulkner ’ s “ A Rose for Emily. ” Some narra-
tive voices are presented more obliquely, as in “ The Winds, ” through a character ’ s
thoughts, dreams, or memories. Characters isolated in unusual ways, such as deaf -
mutes in “ The Key ” and “ First Love, ” result in the creation of some of Welty ’ s most
“ obstructionist ” narratives. Noel Polk observes that the narrative voice in “ Old Mr.
Marblehall, ” who lives a double life as Mr. Bird, “ moves freely and fl uidly in to and
out of Marblehall ’ s mind in ways that make it diffi cult to determine the story ’ s point
of view ” (Polk 557). As several scholars have shown, clearly one of Welty ’ s major
subjects, which in large part determines her style, is the nature of storytelling, and
of communication – that is, of language and limits – between characters, as well as
between artist and reader. 13
“ Music from Spain ” ( Collected Stories 393 – 426) is a major story in The Golden Apples ,
a volume united by, among other devices, the imagery of language and limits, of walls
and other barriers. 14 In this story, Eugene MacLain spends a day wandering through
San Francisco in the company of a Spanish guitarist with red fi ngernails. Neither
speaks the other ’ s language, whether it is the difference between English and Spanish
or, as Rebecca Mark believes, “ the difference between the language of the dominant
conventional culture and the language of the artist – between the language of society
and the language of love ” ( Mark , Dragon ’ s Blood 222). 15 Yet the language barrier does
not hinder a companionship that helps each man through a personal crisis during the
day. The dual protagonists have in common the facts that neither is native to San
Francisco, that each has slapped a woman that morning and then ventured alone into
the city, and that each has a secret he cannot share. Ironically, Eugene, a native Mis-
sissippian, who has lived in San Francisco for years, does not at fi rst perceive a con-
nection to the foreigner. The story of Eugene and the Spaniard is told by an ostensibly
third - person narrator, who nonetheless most often sees through Eugene ’ s eyes. That
story is framed by the story of Eugene and Emma, told by a triple combination of
third - person narrator, limited point - of - view narrator, and Eugene ’ s unmediated
thoughts and verbalizations. That, in turn, is framed by the story of Eugene in the
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context of family and community in Mississippi, told by a variety of tellers in the
surrounding stories of The Golden Apples .
Of that larger story, which includes the exploits of Eugene ’ s wandering Aengus -
like, father, King MacLain, who is continually searching for Yeats ’ s “ golden apples
of the sun, ” a few telling glimpses are seen here. And indeed, the evocations of Mis-
sissippi are not peripheral to the story. Eugene, in fact, is a pale version of his father;
and he is emotionally scarred by the notoriety accorded the elder MacLain in the
Mississippi town Morgana. The difference seems to be that King ran toward the world
and life, while Eugene has been running away. He is in some ways like the protagonist
in Welty ’ s “ Old Mr. Marblehall, ” whom Polk has compared with Poe ’ s alienated “ Man
of the Crowd, ” and with Henry James ’ s John Marcher, who is “ waiting for experience,
meaning, signifi cance, to fall on him from somewhere else, ” and with T. S. Eliot ’ s J.
Alfred Prufrock, who is “ afraid to assert himself against his own meaninglessness ”
(Polk 557, 564).
After a year ’ s unexpressed, thus unshared, pain over their child ’ s death, Eugene has
unaccountably slapped his wife, Emma, at the breakfast table. The visibly structured
story of seven sections follows Eugene from his front door “ down … the street like
the sag of a rope that disappeared into fog; then through the city, up into the hills,
and back home. ” As he walks, Eugene recognizes the artist he and Emma had seen
in concert the previous night; and the mutual adventure of the two men begins when
he pulls the Spaniard out of harm ’ s way on a busy street. It may have been the only
heroic thing he has ever done, as the man
’
s imminent danger is a transfor
ming
moment, when “ a gate opened to Eugene … [and he] sprang forward as if to protect
his own. ” Actually, the impetus for the adventure may have begun during the guitar-
ist ’ s performance the previous night, when the music had engendered in Eugene “ a
deep lull in his spirit. … He felt a lapse … in some visit to a vast present - time. ” The
memory of this experience the next morning causes him to decide that he cannot go,
as usual, to his job as a watch repairman.
Section IV, the center of the story, comes at noon, when the two men have an
extravagant lunch and then resume their odyssey, climbing to up the cliffs at Land ’ s
End. They seem to be enjoying the day; yet negative images begin to accumulate,
including the accidental death of a pedestrian. As they walk, Eugene reexamines his
relationship with Emma, blaming her for the death of their little daughter, Fan.
Welty ’ s narrative never enters the mind of the Spaniard, and he speaks only one word
to Eugene: “ Mariposa , ” identifying a wild lily by the Spanish word, which means
butterfl y, but also is a common term for a gay man. Eugene ’ s voice is heard through
the feelings he expresses aloud and those expressed silently in his thoughts; in fact,
the repetition of “ Eugene felt ” or “ He felt ” happens so often that a dramatization
of the story was at fi rst presented with the title “ He felt. ” 16 Thus the story demon-
strates Welty ’ s idea that the writer “ can never stop trying to make feeling felt ” ( Eye
of the Story 105). Eugene ’ s self - dialogue begins with the morning ’ s slapping incident
and slowly works back to the cause of his pain. He wonders why he has struck Emma.
But then, in an italicized passage, he argues with himself: “ Why not strike her? And if
290
Ruth D. Weston
she thought he would stay around only to hear her start tuning up, she had another think
coming. ” This more strident voice reveals not only a different scenario but a different,
submerged, persona – one that aspires to a more forthright, if clich é d, mode of expres-
sion. The relationship between Eugene and Emma, who was previously his boarding -
house landlady, is suggested when Eugene thinks, “ If he had wanted to kill her, he
would have had to eat everything on her table fi rst, and praise it. ” For Eugene, the