The Optimist’s Daughter (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Eudora Welty
- First Published: 1969
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: The early 1960’s
- Setting: New Orleans, Louisiana, and the fictional Mount Salus, Mississippi
- Genres: Long fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: 1960’s, Memory, Parents and children, Surgery or surgeons, Fathers, Mississippi, New Orleans, Death or dying, Judges, Funeral rites or ceremonies
- Locales: New Orleans, LA, Mississippi, Mount Salus, MS
Characters Discussed
Laurel McKelva Hand, a widow in her mid- forties and a successful fabric designer living in Chicago. Slender, stable, and with “her hair still dark,” she is the optimist’s daughter of the novel’s title. She has flown to New Orleans to be with her father for his operation to repair a damaged retina. She reads to him during his initial recovery and then returns to her family home for his funeral—and to sort out some of her own past. Much of the novel and many of its memories are filtered through Laurel’s consciousness, especially back at Mount...
[The entire page is 930 words long]
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