Abstract
This essay reads Eudora Welty’s novella The Ponder Heart (1954) as a comic re-enactment of the Dionysian–Apollonian conflict, in which Uncle Daniel Ponder embodies the Dionysian life-force and his niece Edna Earle Ponder represents the Apollonian advocate of order, reason, and society’s values. The paper examines the complex characterizations of Uncle Daniel, Edna Earle, and Bonnie Dee Peacock, the tall-tale narrative structure of the novel, and its representation of Southern society and womanhood. The essay argues that Welty’s comic vision encompasses serious truths about the mysterious nature of the human personality and the battle between self and society.
Keywords: Eudora Welty, The Ponder Heart, Dionysian, Apollonian, Southern literature, comedy, Uncle Daniel, Edna Earle
Introduction
Eudora Welty’s short novel The Ponder Heart was published by the New Yorker in December 1953 and a separate publication followed in 1954. According to Robert Liddell, “[A] novelist writing absolutely in the middle of his true range will be writing his best, like a singer singing in the best part of his register.” This is true of Welty’s shortest novel (novella) The Ponder Heart, since it depended more heavily than the rest of Miss Welty’s work on local colour for its effectiveness. The novel is a tour-de-force of sustained humour and is a mixture of subtle irony, broad comedy and observation of human foibles. Nowhere in Miss Welty does the comic spirit make a shamble of the assumptions of society as in The Ponder Heart.
Eudora Welty’s The Ponder Heart has been read as a comic re-enactment of the Dionysian–Apollonian conflict. In this analysis, Uncle Daniel is seen as the admirable centre of the work, the Dionysian life-force, engaged in a struggle with his niece Edna Earle, the “funny and pathetic Apollonian advocate of order, reason, self-denial and society’s values.” In this short novel we hear the voice of the narrator, unsophisticated, recognizable provincial and in exhaustible, relieved only by the “transcribed” conversation of others who come and go in her story of uncle Daniel Ponder and the heart that brought him much joy in life and near the end much sadness as well.
Plot and Structure
Welty’s novel The Ponder Heart (1954) depicts a fun-and-games world. In this work, as narrated by Edna-Earle Ponder, a father has his son committed to the state mental hospital to teach him a lesson. A mistake takes place and the father is confined while the son gets released. The middle-aged son Daniel Ponder takes a very young wife, who insists that they should not live together.
Daniel Ponder, accidentally tickles his wife to death during a storm and at the ensuing trial for murder, the generous-hearted defendant unwittingly gives all his money away to the jury and the crowd and gets acquitted. In spite of all this, the only admitted suffering in the story is Uncle Daniel’s: he frequently suffers from lack of company with whom he is to share his tales. The origin of his trouble is that he “was used to purely being rich, not having money,” and the money he handed out so freely came between him and his beloved community.
The Ponder Heart is a Southern farce or a tall tale. The combination of the colloquial language, the exaggerated comic actions, the triumph of the naif uncle Daniel over powerful and more intelligent forces in several incidents, and the comic courtroom scene places the novella in the tall tale tradition.
Edna Earle Ponder
Edna Earle, the narrator of the novel, moves between two extremes—her uncle Daniel Ponder and Grandpa Sam Ponder. She is the mirror of Bonnie Dee, uncle Daniel’s seventeen year old wife, on the side of positive synthesis. Throughout her narration Edna Earle coyly suppresses the acknowledgement of her age.
In Edna Earle we find the combination of her grandpa and Uncle Daniel’s qualities. Grandpa’s capacity for action and Uncle Daniel’s for feeling combine in her. Balancing between her grandpa and Uncle, Edna Earle has created a life not of peace but vitality. She arrives at a reciprocal harmony between the superior intelligence that characterized grandpa and the unrestrained feelings of Uncle Daniel. “The thinking and feeling one, she is the real possessor of the pondering and ponderous heart of the title.”
Edna Earle is mentally strong and asks no one to cry with her, as her uncle does, and wastes little pity on herself. Edna Earle is as much a Ponder as Uncle Daniel. Her father was the oldest child and Uncle Daniel, the youngest. One of the most convincing measures of the superiority of Edna Earle’s heart is her capacity to suffer, not just for self, but for others too.
Edna Earle Ponder is the enlightened character in The Ponder Heart. Her insights are far-reaching. She realises that grandpa’s expectation of “correcting” the childish uncle Daniel by consigning him to an asylum is itself “child-foolishness.” She is the champion of a life fully and freely lived. Edna Earle is Eudora Welty’s comic presentation of the whole human self. She feels thinks and acts. Her dynamic, shifting, experimental combination of these qualities is humanly superior to the rigid control of anyone of the extremes. Edna Earle’s “terrible story” is that privately her heart is wrung with a thousand concerns for the orderly way of life she sees dropping into oblivion before her attentive eyes. She is a victim of the battle between self and society.
Uncle Daniel
The next important character is uncle Daniel, the supposed hero of the novel, who is not in touch with reality. The story of The Ponder Heart brings out the different manifestations of Daniel Ponder’s love for people and the consequences of this love. The stranger need not have to open his mouth for Daniel is ready to do all the talking. Daniel Ponder loves the people regardless of their colour and social standing.
Uncle Daniel is a “man greatly beloved,” “an integrity of innocence,” and like his Biblical namesake a blessed talker with “touched lips.” Uncle Daniel stands as an illustration for the claim that all failings may become laughable, and sometimes even good qualities. Welty sees the incongruity between our ideals and reality, and where she could have shown despair, she chooses laughter.
Conclusion
The Ponder Heart is concerned with such serious truths as the mysterious nature of the human personality but the most predominant and distinctive quality in the novel is its exuberance, delight and vitality. V.S. Pritchett, in a review of the novella says: “Edna Earle’s narrative is remarkable for its headlong garrulity and also for its preposterous silences and changes of subject at the crises of the tale. She is a respectable young scold with a long tradition in English sentimental comedy.” To conclude, “the Ponder Heart is one of Miss Welty’s lighter works, but there is not a mistake in it.”