Eudora Welty's short story Moon Lake was written in 1947 and subsequently rejected by seven magazines. It eventually found its way into print in 1949, in Sewanee Review. Welty based the story on personal experiences of a girlhood summer camp in Rankin County, Mississippi. Much of the writing is characterised by sensuous attention to detail, with ethereal characters shimmering through a lush yet ominous landscape. Sex and nature are fused in richly organic descriptions that veer towards the perverse. In one scene a prim and proper mother accuses an adolescent life saver of corrupting nature itself: "You little rascal, I bet you run down and pollute the spring, don't you?". Welty also employs a subtle humour that sometimes finds its expression in outright farce. Middle class propriety comes undone when ridiculously trying to assert order amongst the chaos of an amoral nature.
The Plot of Moon Lake
Moon Lake describes the events at a summer camp in the fictionalised area of Morgana. Two groups of girls attend the camp, one being a fairly middle class set and the other a group of orphans who are there on charity. The story describes the two different classes of girls mixing and getting to know each other, with the action moving towards a dramatic climax when one of the orphan girls, Easter, nearly drowns.
Most of the story concentrates on the relationship between three girls, Nina Carmichael and Jinny Love Stark, and the orphan girl Easter. Most of the story finds its focus through Easter. Nina and Jinny Love exhibit an all consuming curiosity with the enigmatic and Sphinx-like Easter. Easter ultimately achieves a supreme and impenetrable mystery when she has a near death experience, and is saved by the surly life saver and boy scout, Loch Morrison.
The Pivotal Character of Easter
Most of Moon Lake peers intensely and wonderingly at the orphan girl, Easter. She is a tough girl with a blowsy, "whatever" attitude, offering her trademark quip "I should worry, I should care". Early on she is noted as a leader of the orphan girls, and keeps fast company in the form of Geneva, who starts her holiday at the camp by swiftly stealing Nina's little lead-mold umbrella. Easter also considers herself very much her own creation. When she writes her name in the sand, she informs her fellow campers that she chose her own name. When quizzed on who gave her this authority, Easter brazenly remarks, "I let myself name myself.".
While it's clear that Easter is a coarse tough girl, she's also a mystery that everyone, the reader included, covets. Her very being is so secret that Welty tells us "The night knew about Easter. All about her." In one pivotal passage, which points to the story's main theme being transcendence, Nina ponders what it would be like to transform herself into someone else, especially "the orphan".
"The Orphan! she thought exultantly. The other way to live. There were secret ways. She thought. Time's really short. I've been only thinking like the others. It's only interesting, only worthy, to try for the fiercest secrets. To slip into them all - to change. To change for a moment into Gertrude, into Mrs Gruenwald, into Twosie - into a boy. To have been an orphan."
Enter the Boy Scout and Life Saver
Easter reaches her mysterious apogee when she accidentally plunges into Moon Lake and is saved by Loch Morrison, the boy scout and life saver. Loch is a typical adolescent boy, holding all around him - especially the girls he is employed to watch over - in contempt. When he has to resuscitate Easter he pushes the female company away from him, even 'hiding' Easter from the adult camp supervisor Mrs Gruenwald. These scenes between Easter and Loch provide an almost sexual climax to the story, written in exquisitely elongated passages, a strange mix of sex and death. Welty uses almost explicitly sexual language to describe Loch's trying to save Easter.
"By now the Boy Scout seemed for ever part of Easter and she part of him, he in motion on the up-and-down and she stretched across. He was dripping, while her skirt dried on the table; so in a manner they had changed places too."
Moon Lake is a rich and strange prose poem, a meditation on the mystery of personality and the ludicrousness of overly civilised behaviour in the face of life and nature's unfathomable forces. Welty writes in an absorbing style that is meticulous and fine, without being rarefied. She also has a taste for subtle humour that gently mocks her imperious females. Moon Lake is a rare and exotic story that demands slow and repeated reading.
Source
Welty, Eudora. Moon Lake. Penguin Modern Classics. ISBN: 9780141196275
This is an old review, written in April 2011 and posted here for the first time.
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