Sexing the Domestic: Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding and the Sexology Movement

Southern Quarterly, Winter 2004 by Patterson, Laura Sloan

Though Shelley is tapped by Battle to do the honors of storytelling, she cries "Oh, Papa, not me!" and allows India to narrate (75). Shelley's cry serves as both an answer to his request that she tell the tale and as an answer to the novel's unasked question, "Why doesn't Shelley marry before Dabney?" As well as answering her father on the question of marriage and narration ("not me!"), Shelley also performs what we can assume will be her next step, should she continue to shun marriage: she hands the situation off to India. In this way, the telling of the tale acts as the feminine birthright to first marriage among sisters, a birthright still actively championed among some contemporary American families who feel that it is somehow "not right" to marry off a younger sister first. Within this schema, the narration of the "family tale" is distinctly feminized. While it might seem that George's bravery is at the center of the narrative, the sub-text and context of the scene of the narration indicate that much of the family history is based on the choices of its women, both about and within their marriages.

Shelley, however, has internalized to the ultimate degree the family rhetoric on conformity to type: she has become the sensitive, artistic daughter her family expects, but she has learned to play this role so well that she cannot conceive of integrating her current role with the role of bride. In essence, the Fairchild clan has begun to valorize familial role-playing and loyalty to family and above all else, even the expansion of the clan through its progeny. Again, this shift in thinking remains consistent with the sexology of the time, particularly in light of Ellis's claim that a declining birth rate would lead to a prosperous, resourceful nation (Essays in War-Time 29, 74). Despite the new acceptance of declining birth rates, Shelley herself is not insensitive to the events surrounding her. She expresses herself in a manner true to her family type, especially during the trestle narrative, just at the point when India relates Robbie Reid's outrage:

Dabney cried, "You should have heard her!"

Shelley went white.

"Robbie said, 'George Fairchild, you didn't do this for me!'" India repeated. "Look, Shelley's upset."

"Shelley can't stand anything, it looks like, with all this Dabney excitement," said Battle. "Now don't let me see you cry."

"Leave me alone," Shelley said.

"She's crying," India said, with finality. "Look, Mr. Rondo: she's the oldest." (79)

Dabney's cry of derision at the recollection of Robbie's behavior places Dabney herself at the center of the family narrative for a moment. More importantly, it also establishes Dabney as one of the arbiters of protocol, a position she has only begun to occupy as a bride, even if through a less-than-ideal marriage. Shelley turns white not because of some unspoken sympathy with Robbie, but because she realizes that the familial acceptance of Dabney'sjudgment on Robbie signals that Dabney is no longer a child within the family. In short, Shelley has not been able to create a bulwark against her greatest fear-the disruption of the family-through her decision not to marry. India's exclamation for Mr. Rondo to "look" because "she's the oldest" is not far off the mark. India realizes that Shelley has been replaced in her social standing as the oldest by her relinquishment of the marriage birthright. While she might have been in Dabney's position of marking family insiders and outsiders, she has now been reduced to the position of a child admonished not to cry, figuratively changing places even with India, who has successfully documented the family history for the minister.