Social Responsibility in Eudora Weltys A Visit of Charity - Essay Example

Social Responsibility in Eudora Welty’s A Visit of Charity As time goes by, the only issue people impatiently look forward to is their imaginary tranquil and less stressful retirement. Aging is an inevitable law of nature. The tension strikes some hard and others, who might be luckier, with a little more ease. The elderly are divided into groups categorized by their character, physical health, and their fortunes. Depending on their status in these categories their lifestyle differs. The elderly normally get grumpier as they age. In time, their behaviors would look more identical to a child; therefore not many can tolerate their behaviors and attitude. The fortunate ones with money go to high tend facilities and they would be taken ideal attention but the ones who are less fortunate are put in “special homes”. Families who put their elderly in these special houses thinks that they are doing the right thing and the elderly enjoy being with others just like themselves. On the contrary, they very much detest these places. They should create a more pleasant atmosphere in these homes because it mineralizes their feeling of isolation from the society they used to interact with. Furthermore, they feel cast out from their family which makes them unhappy and eventually leads to depression and an early death. However, it is not only the family that is responsible for the way in which the elderly are treated, but also the society at large. Eudora Welty’s A Visit of Charity is a poignant example of how aged individuals can be left to leave alone in unfriendly nursing homes. The short story’s setting is very significant in this sense. Marian, a fourteen – year old Campfire Girl who comes to the nursing home on a visit of charity, arrives there on cold winter day. The icy atmosphere that envelops the land outside is also predominant in the interior of the home. The snow that covers everything around does not soften the perspective. Moreover, the lack of vegetation suggests a lifeless scenery. The only trace of flora, the “prickly shrub”, enhances the impression of wasteland that predominates over the whole landscape. The gay red coat that the young girl wears contrasts sharply with the desolated setting of the Old Ladies’ Home: “Holding a potted plant before her, a girl of fourteen jumped off the bus in front of the Old Ladies’ Home, on the outskirts of town. She wore a red coat and her straight yellow hair was hanging down loose from the pointed white cap…” (Welty 113). The fact that the asylum is situated at the outskirts of the town points to the complete isolation and forgetfulness in which the old ladies live. Society does not hold a place for the elderly. As Suzanne Marrs emphasizes, Welty’s short story emphasizes how grim and forsaken a nursing home can be for the aged individuals: “A Visit of Charity suggests how grim nursing home can be for aged individuals unable to reside with family members” (Marrs 279). Moreover, the young girl’s self-interested visit adds to the main message of the story: the old women are not a part of society and their troubles are deliberately ignored. Her visit, as it shall be seen, is not one of true charity. Marian is uncaring and selfish: she hurries through the visit, performing her task with a view of the three points it will earn her. The feeling that she descends into a weird, unnatural world, a “robbers’ cave” where she will is temporarily entrapped, shows that the girl does not regard the old women as a part of her own, familiar universe. They seem to be creatures of a fairy land, witches that are ready to devour her. By emphasizing this impression that Marion has during her visit, Welty shows that the aged women are not only deserted by society but actually shunned and treated inhumanely by those who come into contact with them. The quick and selfish visit that Marian pays the old women is very significant in this sense, since it betrays the lack of preoccupation that the society manifests for the elderly. Other images in the text reveal the same atmosphere. The portraits of the main characters are very important with respect to the relationship established between society and the aged individuals who are forced to live in a nursery home. The nurse who ushers Marian in almost forcefully, seems a cold and unrelenting character in the eyes of the fourteen – year old girl. The two women that she eventually visits are seemingly opposite personalities: one of them is aggressive and bitter while the other is cold and passive. The way in which they behave shows that they have been embittered by the dehumanizing treatment they were submitted to. Society seems to forget that the old women in the nursery home are actual individuals who need support and attention. Marion herself is a selfish young girl who does not comprehend the real purpose of her visit, “charity”. The potted flower that she brings is only a formality and not a real gift. When, towards the end of the visit, one of the old women asks Marian for charity, the girl flees the scene without looking back: “In an affected high pitched whine she cried ‘Oh, little girl, have you a penny to spare for a poor old woman that’s not got anything of her own? We don’t have a thing in the world - not a penny for candy – not a thing? Little girl, just a nickel – a penny…” (Welty 117). Marian is not animated by kindness or charity while she pays the visit, but only by selfishness and repulsion. Instead of giving, she runs away feeling cornered and entrapped. From the moment she enters the asylum to the moment she gets out and runs for the bus, Marian is concerned only with herself and her own needs. Through the setting, the plot and the characters chosen, Welty pinpoints the society’s rejection of old people. The old women living in a nursery home are no longer a part of the normal, busy world. What Welty underlines is the society’s deliberate and fierce refusal to consider the old individuals in its scheme. Marian offers an example of the way in which society regards those that have been discarded in an impersonal and cold home on the outskirts of the town. They do not have any belongings and any family and they cannot take part in the active life of society and therefore they are left to live in complete isolation. Society does not want to take the old people in, since they are no longer of use. What is also significant is that Marian leaves the home unchanged. She has not attempted to understand the old women and their troubles and the only impression that is left on her after the visit is a feeling of discomfort. When she is safe outside, in her own careless world, Marian symbolically takes out a hidden red apple to enjoy it by herself: “Under the prickly shrub she stopped and quickly, without being seen, retrieved a red apple she had hidden there” (Welty 117). This apparently insignificant gesture is enough to demonstrate her selfishness and her inability to share or to give. Marian looks for comfort in something that she can enjoy on her own, rapidly putting behind her the unpleasantness of her experience during the visit. Welty points out therefore to the inability of an individual to behave humanely to another person that is helpless and old. Old age is ignored since it can no longer keep pace with the normal course of events. Instead of feeling charity, Marian feels only anxiety for her own self. The red apple that she bites in at the end of the story, her and her inability to give during the visit show that the tendency towards self protection of the individual. Marian instinctively rejects any thought of the old ladies, shielding her own world from unpleasant and uncomfortable knowledge. However, the story also offers another possible perspective on the situation presented. Several critics have noted the fairy-tale like atmosphere that envelops the child from the beginning. Marian seems to have embarked into an initiating, mythical journey to the unknown: “A Visit of Charity also has been discussed as one of Welty's many fictions informed by allusion to fairy tale, legend, and myth, often refracted through earlier literary representations of these primal materials. In this case, images of captivity and imprisonment coalesce with symbolic journeys to the after-life and/or the underworld” (Millichap 81). In this sense, Welty portrays the relationship between generations. Marian is undoubtedly selfish since she rejects the reality of the old women’s loneliness and desolation in the home. The fact that she is animated by a feeling of unreality is a token of her automated rejection of anything that might cause her discomfort. She wants to ignore the existence of the home and the reality of the old ladies in order to preserve her own world from unpleasantness. Nevertheless, Marian represents the common reaction that the young individuals have when they come in contact with the old ones. Welty points out that young people usually perceive old age as something grotesque and unnatural that does not correspond to their own vitality: “The girl’s nervous visit captures the weirdness of old age in the eyes of the young, who escape from her presence as quickly as the Campfire Girl does, back into the heedless world of normal life” (Hutchings Westling 65). In a sense, there is an inevitable gap between the young and the old, which makes the old grumpy and the young extremely selfish and uncaring. Thus, Welty offers a glimpse of the bitter life that the old individuals lead in a home. Society’s exclusion of the old is interpreted in two ways in the story; on the one hand, the fact that the old people are deserted by their own families and rejected by society shows that the young are selfish and uncaring; on the other hand, the story also points to the unavoidable gap between old and young age. Both of these interpretations however highlight a painful and disturbing reality: the fact that life in an asylum can be very grim for the old individuals, who feel rejected by their families and by society. Works Cited: Hutchings Westling, Louise. Eudora Welty. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1989. Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Millichap, Joseph. “Eudora Welty's personal epic: autobiography, art, and classical myth.” The Southern Literary Journal 38.1 (2005). 76-91. Welty, Eudora. Collected Stories. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1980. Read More