A worn path: the eternal quest in Eudora Welty's fiction

¶ … Welty's story is the suaveness of an elderly woman. Often stereotyped as helpless, foolish, or dim-witted, the woman in Welty's tale makes us look beyond stereotypes to see the person underneath. The topic of this essay, therefore, is that externals -- in this case, elderliness -- can be misleading. People should learn to look beyond in order not to fall into the error of stereotyping.

The story starts off by describing the woman's plodding style, reminiscent of a religious pilgrimage (Saunders, 1992). We are brought into our customary ways of feeling impatience for the woman and of viewing her as someone who needs our help rather than as someone who can help herself. Welty, therefore, deliberately prolongs and elaborates on the description using character and setting as aids (Clugston, 2010; Pollack, 1997) to portray the woman.

Use of character for instance includes the following:

She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. (Langston 2010)

Setting, meanwhile, can be seen not only from the environment itself that matches old age:

The woods were deep and still. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. The cones dropped as light as feathers. Down in the hollow was the mourning dove -- it was not too late for him. (Langston 2010)

It is evidenced, too, from the way the other characters address her. The White man calls her "Granny," whilst the lady and the social workers call her "Grandma."

The author's intention may be to suck us into the expected reaction of perceiving the woman in all the stereotypic ways of society: she is 'unproductive', old, feeble, needs to be put into a nursing home, canto look after herself, is no longer in full possession of her cognitive faculties.. But there, Welty pulls us up sharp. Wait! The woman may be feeble and declining, but her actions certainly indicate extreme acuity and intelligence.

It is not only the reader who is expected to stereotype the 100-year-old woman. The characters in the story do too and, as a consequence, they fall for her tricks. The white man, who may likely have taunted or molested her had she been of a younger age, simply accedes to her request to entertain her. No other Black person could have commandeered him as she did. And she ends up stealing his money.

Never suspecting that a woman of her age would have performed such an act, the White man contents himself with playfully shooting at her thinking he has terrified her. It is she, however, who exults. She has made him pay for his misdeeds.

The woman encounters a lady in the street. We are given no description of this lady, but given the time and context as well as the implied wealth of the woman, may well assume that this was a White lady.

Nonetheless, few people would be willing to stoop down to tie anyone's shoelaces in the street; a White lady would be least inclined to do so were the supplicant a Black beggarly woman (as in this case). Phoenix relies on her age to cajole the 'lady' to tie her laces. Impressions fool us.

Finally, Phoenix uses her wiles and tricks to squeeze free medicine -- and nickels -- out of the tight-fisted social workers in the formal Social Work institution. At first faking amnesia, she arouses their sympathy and moral feelings for the "Grandma."

'All right.' The nurse was trying to hush her now. She brought her a bottle of medicine. 'Charity,' she said, making a check mark in a book. (Langston 2010)

The social workers perceive an old feeble lady. They conceive her to be in evident difficulty and weakness and, given her evident decrepitude, cannot reject her supplications. They see the external facade -- the haggardness and age -- and fall for the stereotype that age represents weakness in all faculties. They end up, not only giving the woman free drugs but also with giving her a nickel. That money, too, has been accumulated though Phyllis' wiles:

'It's Christmas time, Grandma,' said the attendant. 'Could I give you a few pennies out of my purse?'