It is known of Eudora Welty to create characters living in many dimensions. Marblehall is the second human figure tied to the protagonist and betraying his apparent ease. This has special implications for the old couple: ‘everybody passing by thinks that he looks quite as if he thinks his parents had him just to show they could.’ Little Mr. On his way to school with one of his parents, the child’s vindictiveness is seen in an instance of crushing a little green worm under his feet. This little, amazing, and fascinating kid has a penetrating look with a certain vindictiveness about him. She is described as servile, sleepy, expensive, tortured, with her mind pinned to her husband’s diet. And her unease does not leave her husband out. Marblehall tends to be anxiously prominent on occasions, doing her hair like ‘a unicorn horn’, singing, and even writing some of the songs. Marblehall is keen on hiding himself and she does everything out in a matter-of-habit fashion. Her late marriage has induced in her a quality that runs counter to her husband’s apparent ease: ‘Her late marriage has set in upon her nerves like a retriever nosing and puffing through old dead leaves out in the woods.’ Marblehall, the ‘thick, elongated old woman’ who has spent her life trying to ‘escape from the parlor-like jaws of self-consciousness’. One sign of this protectiveness is his feeling of covering himself up: Marblehall is cold even in summers and always wears his thick, glowing coat of tweed. This lack of social importance is countered by the self-protectiveness of our old man. Marblehall out in the street can’t help saying ‘so well preserved!’ to his face and they can’t help saying cheerfully ‘one foot in the grave’ behind his back. Being portrayed as an old man, his person is generalized to represent all elderly folk: ‘Watch and you’ll see how preciously old people come to think they are made-the way they walk, like conspirators, bent over a little, filled with protection.’ Clearly, the issue touched upon is the lack of social importance which old folk receive at large. Marblehall begins with the character description of the lead character, a sixty-six year old man who ‘never did anything’ and ‘never got married until he was sixty’.
The uniqueness of the story lies in the manner Welty uses the same character to produce an account of its life by looking at it from different perspectives. Marblehall, the author brings up the issue of living a ‘double life’, something we all do but never have the time and idea of reflecting on its existence. Marblehall is Eudora Welty’s one of the few easy-to-comprehend stories. Set in the town of Natchez, Mississippi, Old Mr. Published first in 2009 in The Audience Review (a publication of World Audience Books), this short review essay of mine touches on key features of Eudora Welty’s character-driven short story Old Mr.
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