Eudora Welty's 'Why I Live at the P.O.'" Retrieved online: Uncle ondo is a cross-dresser, evident especially in his flamboyant donning of Stella-ondo's pink kimono. Sister and Stella ondo also compete for the attention of one of the story's most ambiguous characters: Uncle ondo. The motif of spinsterhood is symbolized in one scene when Sister describes, "I marched in where they were all playing Old Maid." The card game bears the euphemistic name for a spinster. Similarly, women who did not marry were scorned as spinsters. Eudora Welty wrote "Why I Live at the P.O." At a time at which women were not expected to have children out of wedlock.
Faced with the prospect of living out her life as a spinster, it is understandable why Sister might feel as angry and jealous as she does.
She has also been forced to accept a job given to her by Papa-Daddy, which might be hampering her self-esteem further. Vision and Division in 'Kin' by Eudora Welty. fr/faulkner/wf/pages/welty/article_chouard_03.htm>. Why I Live at the P.O." Colloque Eudora Welty: The Poetics of the Body. "The Ties that Bind: the Poetics of Anger in Eudora Welty's However, the exact trouble that has driven Sister here to the P.O., as Sister also tells us, began not so much with the mere return home of Stella Rondo, and Shirley T, but instead, with Sister's own comment…Ĭhoard, Geraldine.
All circumstances and previously-existing character viewpoints are in fact abruptly altered, and much for the worse in this family, by Stella Rondo's and the child's sudden and unexpected appearance. is presented as the result of a disruptive event: the return of the Prodigal Sister, Stella-Rondo, which interferes with the established, allegedly peaceful, order" ("Ties that Bind"). As Choard points out, of this story: "Sister's move to the P.O. From here, we then learn, mostly implicitly, just how deep indeed the domestic discord (i.e., in today's psychological parlance, "dysfunctional" behavior) in Sister's family runs. Sister has been driven to take up residence here by family discord.