The Ponder Heart

by Eudora Welty

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Characters Discussed

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Edna Earle Ponder

Edna Earle Ponder, a middle-aged, unmarried woman, the last of the Ponder family. She narrates the events to a guest at the Beulah Hotel, which she was given by her Uncle Daniel fifteen years ago. She is garrulous and good-humored, and she sees herself as smart. She is also perceptive regarding people’s character. A “good Presbyterian” with a sense of civic responsibility (she runs the rummage sale held to benefit black people), she does not participate in small-town sectarian bickering. She sees Bonnie Dee for the “little thing with yellow, fluffy hair” that she is, and at Bonnie Dee’s funeral she describes Mrs. Peacock, who wears tennis shoes, as “big and fat as a row of pigs.” Generally, Edna Earle is good-natured, tolerant, and compassionate. Despite the suffering caused by the trial, she does not allow herself to become embittered. She willingly denies herself the pleasure of marriage and children to accept her role as Uncle Daniel’s caretaker.

Daniel Ponder

Daniel Ponder, Edna Earle’s uncle, now in his fifties. He is a lovable, childlike man who enjoys being rich because he can give things away. He appears to have the mental equipment and emotional maturity of an eleven-or twelve-year-old. A big man with the large Ponder head, he has short, curly white hair and is always dressed in a white suit with a red bow tie and a large Stetson. Uncle Daniel loves to tell stories and loves having an audience. In effect, he is the ward of the town of Clay, and he is so obviously harmless that the charge of murder brought against him is comical.

Bonnie Dee Peacock Ponder

Bonnie Dee Peacock Ponder, who is seventeen years old when she marries Uncle Daniel and always looks seventeen, according to Edna Earle. She comes from the country to work at the five-and-ten in Clay. Tiny (she weights ninety-eight pounds) and doll-like, with blonde hair and “coon eyes,” she spends most of her time sending off for clothing and other items, some of which, like the washing machine that she buys before the house has electricity, are useless to her. She comes from a large, poor, country family, and although she is certainly materialistic, she is perhaps not so much mercenary as she is naïve and immature. Nevertheless, she is not a sympathetic character, and she never acquires enough dimension or personality to cause the reader to lament her comical death as a result of tickling from Daniel.

Grandpa Ponder

Grandpa Ponder, who appears only in the early pages of the novel. He is the head of the family. Although he is devoted to his last surviving son, Daniel, and treats Edna Earle well, Grandpa Ponder manipulates the lives of those around him, in part through his wealth and local influence. When the asylum fails to be the appropriate answer for Uncle Daniel, he arranges a marriage with an acceptable matron. When that fails and Uncle Daniel marries Bonnie Dee, Grandpa Ponder dies of a stroke.

Teacake Magee

Teacake Magee, a widow and a member of the choir in the Baptist church. She becomes Uncle Daniel’s first wife, but the marriage lasts only two months. He seems to have liked her, as he likes virtually everyone, but he objects to the noise of her “spool-heels” on the floor.

Narciss

Narciss, the black cook who waits on Bonnie Dee and behaves more as her playmate than her servant.

Dorris Gladney

Dorris Gladney, the ambitious prosecutor who talks the Peacocks into bringing Uncle Daniel to court on a murder charge. Conceited and self-important, Gladney tries to use clever...

(This entire section contains 660 words.)

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ploys to trap the naïve Uncle Daniel. Although Gladney loses the case, Edna Earle speculates that he will become governor of Mississippi.

DeYancey Clanahan

DeYancey Clanahan, Uncle Daniel’s well-meaning but ineffectual defense attorney and son of an old family friend, “Judge” Tip Clanahan, who considers himself too old to take the case.

Characters

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Edna Earle Ponder embodies a quintessential character archetype, much like Daniel and Bonnie Dee. With a mix of pride and warmth, Edna Earle graciously grants Daniel ample liberty, allowing him to indulge his whims and choose his own path in marriage. Her penchant for chatter marks her as the quintessential Southern gossip, relishing the chance to regale a captive audience with the intricacies of her family's escapades.

Daniel, in his own right, represents an archetype: endearingly simple and amiable, a figure evoking either the nurturing instincts of a spinster or the predatory eyes of the avaricious. Bonnie Dee and her kin are familiar faces in the realm of Southern fiction and cinema. With their ungainly grammar, insatiable greed, and tight-knit clannishness, they reemerge later as Wanda Fay's family in The Optimist's Daughter (1972). For Edna Earle, they are a source of endless vexation, yet for the reader, they provide a delightful wellspring of humor.

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