The Optimist's Daughter

At the beginning of the story, Judge McKelva is about to undergo surgery for his eye because he is unable to see. The “eye” and the concept of “seeing” are not meant to be taken literally. Welty has introduced them as metaphors for the Judge’s lack of perception about his new wife’s gold-digging and infidelity. Later, we learn he is incapable of seeing the reality of his first wife’s death.

This motif runs through the entire first section of the book for the purpose of setting up the conflict that the main character, Laurel, must resolve. Laurel begins to “see” or grasp the true nature of her father’s brand of optimism, and she makes the choice to face the damages that such blindness can cause—in her father’s case, it killed him—to free herself of her past. 

A dream about her husband sets off Laurel’s reminiscence of the train ride she and her betrothed took before their wedding in Mount Salus. When Laurels sees, from the trestle above, the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, she equates that with the love she feels for her husband. From looking at the river, Laurel forms her belief about conjugal love: that when two people marry, they are absorbed by the “waters” of their love.