The Optimist's Daughter

The color green is scattered throughout the novel in various forms. There is the green of Fay’s earrings and shoes, newly purchased while her husband lies in bed dying. There are the green Mardi Gras beads, worn and dull, on the floor of the cab as Laurel is rushing to the hospital on a premonition that something terrible is happening. Other instances of the color green occur when the undertaker seems to appear out of nowhere from behind the greens, during the wake at the house, and when the greenery obscures the sight of the Judge’s desk. During the funeral, Laurel notices the fake green lawn at the service.

The color green has various associations; jealousy and money on the one hand, and renewal and rebirth on the other. Green is also associated with innocence, a lack of experience, and the need to grow. It is often used to hide ugliness. Plants and shrubbery, as well as fake grass, are there to disguise the brown dirt and other eyesores that would break into people’s illusions about the ugly things that exist in life.

Welty uses the color green to take on all of its different meanings, using it in carefully chosen contexts to denote the varying connotations delivered by the story. For instance, when Fay prances around with her new green earrings and matching green shoes, she is showing off her ambition found in her newly acquired wealth by marriage. When she leaves for Texas, she is wearing the shoes, a symbolic gesture of her freedom to do as she pleases now that her husband is dead. The discolored and worn green Mardi Gras beads in the cab denote that even money doesn’t last; all things die. Green also indicates Fay’s lack of experience and provincialism, as well as her jealousy and financial ambition. When the undertaker appears suddenly from behind the greenery, it’s as if death both hides and bursts out in surprise. The plants hiding the Judge’s desk obscure the Judge’s brilliance as the desk itself is a symbol of his reign in the household.