The Optimist’s Daughter 1119Mrs. Ruffner’s, a northern lady known to be unrea-
sonably strict with her boy servants, who never last
longer than a week in her employ. But the young
Washington will try anything to escape coal mining,
and he is hired to be Mrs. Ruffner’s servant. Within
a week or two, he discovers the secret of her strict-
ness, knows exactly how to please her, and becomes
not only her employee but her friend for life. The
difference in northern ladies, even those who have
servants, is that they run their household like a busi-
ness. Everything has to be done immediately when
asked, lying and making up excuses is unacceptable,
cleaning a room means every surface is free of dust,
and things that need fixing are fixed. This idea of
“work” is not typical in the South. Mrs. Ruffner is
not too proud to work herself, and she takes pride in
her work, although it is unpaid. Washington learns
a lesson about the dignity of manual labor, even
disregarding the profit, which he will try to teach
others all his life.
Arriving at Hampton Institute ragged, dirty,
penniless, and younger than the average student,
Washington is not immediately admitted. Finally, he
is asked to sweep the recitation room as a test of his
earnestness. He sweeps and polishes everything so
well that he is declared fit for Hampton and hired as
a janitor, a job which will pay his board for his entire
stay. While at Hampton, where all the students
learn a trade, he has the opportunity to visit another
school for ex-slaves in Washington, D.C., which
does not require physical labor, and he is dismayed
to find the students more frivolous, less self-reliant,
and more concerned with fashion and comfort than
with helping their race.
When Tuskegee Institute officially opens in
1881, Washington holds classes in a henhouse and a
shanty. His first students are also his most industri-
ous ones: They plant the first crops, build the first
buildings, and even make the bricks, although it
would be cheaper to buy them, considering how
many times the kiln fails at first, but Washington is
determined that Tuskegee will produce bricks not
only for itself but also for the surrounding com-
munity. The work is often dirty and difficult and
has to be done over. Many students complain, and
some leave the school, but more are always arriving
to take their places.
This second wave of students, having heard that
they will be required to labor, inevitably arrive with a
note from their parents, or with their parents in tow,
asking that they be excused from the requirement of
working. They see education and work as opposite
and irreconcilable activities. One becomes educated to
escape work; working prevents one from being edu-
cated. Washington pays no attention to these requests
but spends much time traveling through Alabama
preaching the “Gospel of the Dignity of Work.” Stu-
dents must learn to do something that people need
done or make something that people need to have,
and they must learn how to do it better than anyone
else, to take pride in that accomplishment and to earn
a living by pursuing that trade or occupation.
Washington believed that nothing good came
to anyone without hard work, and his own life is a
rags-to-riches, American dream story, which seems
to show that any man, if he be willing to work hard
enough, can rise from the absolute bottom of society
to the highest pinnacles of achievement.
Barbara Z. ThadenwELTy, EuDora The Optimist’s
Daughter (1972)
The Optimist’s Daughter was first published as a short
story in the New Yorker in 1969, then revised and
published as a short novel in 1972. It won the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction in 1973. As in all of Eudora Welty’s
books, the story takes place in the southern United
States and evokes a particular picture of southern
life. Another characteristic of the novel, prominent in
Welty’s fiction, is its emphasis on one particular event
and individuals’ reactions to it, in this case a funeral.
The protagonist of the novel is Laurel McKelva
Hand, the optimist’s daughter. She returns home to
Mount Salus, Mississippi, for her father’s funeral.
She is joined there by her stepmother, Fay, and the
Mount Salus community. Through their interac-
tions with one another, Welty (1909–2001) explores
the themes of death, family, and memory. Since
all of her biological family is now dead, Laurel must
come to terms with her new place in life and her
memories. In the end, she decides to leave all this
in Mount Salus and return to her new home in
Chicago.