The Optimist's Daughter | Social Concerns
Like her fellow Mississippian William Faulkner, Eudora Welty deals with the conflicting behavioral codes of the waning southern gentry and the emerging lower class. Because the events are seen from Laurel's patrician perspective, the treatment of Fay and her family is almost entirely unsympathetic.
Considering her stepmother a gold-digger, Laurel McKelva Hand has neither accepted the "unsuitable" woman her father married nor understood the reasons for his choice. She avoided any association with Fay until Judge McKelva's surgery forces them to spend hours together in the hospital....
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