"The Naturals: Eudora Welty," in Savages and Naturals: Black Portraits by White Writers in Modern American Literature, University of Delaware Press, 1982, pp. 129-37.

[In the following excerpt, Cooley examines Welty's portrayal of Phoenix Jackson and argues that "what is ultimately so disturbing about 'A Worn Path' is its very innocence and beauty. "]

"A Worn Path" has received a fair amount of critical attention, most of it presuming that Eudora Welty intended her protagonist, Aunt Phoenix Jackson, to be "a symbol of the immortality of the Negro's spirit of endurance," as Alfred Appel puts it [in A Season of Dreams: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, 1965]. The name Aunt Phoenix and the events of the story appear to parallel the legend of the Phoenix, thereby suggesting new life for the aged black woman. Neil Isaacs has suggested [in "Life for Phoenix," Sewanee Review, Vol. 71, 1963] that Phoenix's ailing grandson, to whom she brings medicine and a Christmas gift, may be seen as the infant Christ. His sickness will be healed through Phoenix's love and the medicine she brings from the city. One would think that death, rebirth, and perpetuation are central concerns in "A Worn Path." However, Welty may well have intended the title ironically, for the story she tells is filled with hints that neither Phoenix nor her grandson will long survive—that "A Worn Path" is not essentially about perpetuation and the joy of new life. Beyond her quaint charm, Aunt Phoenix seems too much in the tradition of the many black uncles and aunties admired by whites for their humble resignation to the conditions of their lives.

The story is handled almost entirely from the point of view of Aunt Phoenix. She inhabits a truly "primitive" landscape, "out by the old Natchez Trace." The old black woman, her head tied in a red rag of a bandana, sets out on an early December morning to walk to Natchez for medicine to ease the burns in her grandson's throat, caused two or three years earlier by swallowing lye.

The reason for Phoenix's trip is not apparent until nearly the end of the story. Instead, one follows the delightful old woman through forest and field, listening as she talks to herself and to the plants and animals of her domain:

Out of my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals! . . . Keep out from under these feet, little bobwhites. . . . Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don't let none of those come running in my direction. I got a long way.

Eudora Welty creates a woman who is supremely at home in the primitive landscape. Various signs tell her she should stay at home in the woods, "and nothing will happen to you." At the center of the story is the white myth of black contentment in pastoral or primitive settings. John Edward Hardy's observations on Welty's use here of the nature myth are most astute. Welty is aware of this myth of blacks as "naturals." As Hardy has said, she risks letting this form of primitivism run away with the story, since it is so seductive and so skillfully developed. The white reader may identify with the hunter whom Phoenix meets on her way to Natchez. When he learns she is walking all the way to town, he laughs, "Now you go on home, Granny!" He gives another laugh, filling the whole landscape. "I know you old colored people! Wouldn't miss going to town to see Santa Claus!". The point, of course, is that she is not "colored people," that she is not going to see Santa Claus, and that he does not "know" her. Perhaps Welty intended the hunter to represent many of her readers—people who, like the hunter, might think they know how charming it is to live in the country and how happy the blacks are who live there. But Welty's reinforcement of the nature myth throughout the story makes this position all the easier to maintain. Like the white hunter, the reader may be tempted to view Phoenix, in [John Edward] Hardy's words, [in Images of the Negro in American Literature, 1966] "as one of a race apart, about whom we are obliged to feel no more than a certain condescending curiosity."

Appel has observed that when Phoenix begins her return, bearing the medicine, she is a kind of Magus, "bringing gifts to a little grandson who, waiting alone, all wrapped up in a quilt, recalls the Christ child in a manger." Appel, Isaacs, and Jones discuss the story in terms of Phoenix's strength of character, her love for her grandson, and the endurance of black people that she exemplifies. What must be added is the context in which these virtues are to be seen. Hardy alludes to this when he refers to the story's "scathing indictment" of white civilization (its self-indulgence, its materialism) and in the "soothing medicine" it offers "to heal the hurts of that 'stubborn case,' black mankind."

The medication Phoenix brings is nothing but a soothing, temporary relief for the permanently injured throat of her grandson. One of the nurses even asks if her grandson has died yet. Since the injury took place three years earlier they probably know that special care is needed to cure the boy; the medicine they dispense merely reopens the throat. Is not the absurdity of many black lives in America symbolized in this situation: the permanent injury, the racist condescension and occasional charity offered by white society, the promises of medication and relief (the white lie—itself another kind of lye)?

Black people are able to survive because they live close to the land, according to the white myth of blacks as "naturals." As Phoenix represents aged endurance, her grandson is the future. One's sympathy is drawn to this image of a grandmother and child wrapped in a patchwork quilt, "holding its mouth open like a bird," partly because it reminds one of the madonna and child. It is difficult to cut through the reverence and romance that cloud the story, however, in order to see the babe as a pathetic image of life caught in the stranglehold of white civilization. What has happened to the child's parents, one must ask, that his grandmother must struggle to keep him alive and give him love?

The greatest danger in this story is in imagining that the little grandson will miraculously recover and Aunt Phoenix will not have to take the worn path to Natchez again. Then she could die content in the knowledge that her grandson would grow strong and become a natural man, as comfortable in this land as she has been during her long lifetime. But there are disquieting factors that make this romance unworkable. White society does not seem willing to incur the cost of special care; the situation may well remain as it is until Phoenix dies. The irony of her name lies here; there will be no "little bird" to perpetuate her life. Rather than seeing Phoenix consumed by fire and her young rising from the ashes, one sees instead her offspring slowly dying of ashes, lye being made from wood ashes. The myth of the phoenix becomes a symbol of fatality in Eudora Welty's story.

What is ultimately so disturbing about "A Worn Path" is its very innocence and beauty. Although the story enlarges itself from a primitive idyll to hint at the nature of black and white life in the South, it does so entirely outside the consciousness of Phoenix. Phoenix is clever enough to sneak a nickel from a white hunter and takes pleasure in getting a white lady to tie her shoe, but the reader has no more idea what thoughts cross her consciousness while trudging that worn path than one has of Sam Fathers's thinking about slavery and his Chickasaw heritage in Faulkner's "The Bear." The charm, the determination, the endurance, and the love are about all one sees in Phoenix's character. Further, if Welty intended Phoenix to be a metaphor for the predicament of being black in America, then the implications of the old lady's naiveté and helplessness are even more disturbing.