23 pages • 46 minutes read
Eudora WeltyA Visit of Charity
Fiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1941A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
(Lack of) Compassion
The primary theme of the story is the lack of compassion Marian feels for the women at the Old Ladies’ Home. She visits under the guise of performing a charitable act. But she intends to gain points for her Campfire Girl badges—her altruism is an expression of selfishness. But within minutes of meeting the women and seeing their living conditions, Marian’s thoughts shift. She understands that visiting a home for the elderly is not as easy as she thought it might be.
Halfway into the visit, Marian begins to tell the women that bringing flowers gains her one extra point. She also wants to tell them that if she had brought a Bible and read it to them, it would have counted double. But she decides not to mention it, believing the women wouldn’t listen to her. She understands her idea of charity is not the same as theirs, and her sense of isolation from them grows.
The women argue over whether Addie is sick. The woman in the rocker tells Marian that Addie gets argumentative when “you all come” (140). Marian begins to understand that visits like hers, instead of being helpful, bring out the worst in the two women. The unnamed woman then touches Marian with her hand, and it feels clinging and sticky like a petunia leaf. It’s an important moment in the story, a moment when Marian’s notion of charity is challenged by the old woman. After this Marian feels even more distance between herself and the women.
Loss of Innocence
The second theme is Marian’s loss of innocence upon meeting the old women. The minute she is ushered into their room by the nurse, Marian is unable to say anything, shocked at what she sees. Everything in the room seems wet to her, including the bare floor. When she touches a wicker chair it, too, feels “soft and damp.” Marian’s heart begins speeding up, her hands grow cold, and she can’t hear whether the women are talking or not. She finds she can’t see them clearly and notices how dark the room is. The window shade is down and the door shut. Marian thinks, “It was like being caught in a robbers’ cave, just before one was murdered” (138).
When Addie asks what her name is, Marian can’t remember, saying only that she is a Campfire Girl. The woman goes on to tell her another Campfire Girl came to visit them last month and read to them from the Bible. The women argue about whether they enjoyed it. Without quite realizing it, Addie says, “We all enjoyed it” (139).
Marian wants to believe her visit of charity is enjoyable to the recipients, but she learns it may not be. Now, desperate to leave the room, Marian looks at the wet floor and decides, if she were to get sick, they would have to let her leave. In a matter of minutes, her innocent and naïve ideas of charity are dashed by the women and their living situation.
Sympathy
Sympathy, a third theme of the story, emerges after Marian learns it is Addie’s birthday. She looks closely at the woman. For the first time in her life, Marian identifies with the feelings of a fellow human. She asks Addie how old she is, and Addie begins to cry, now sounding more like a lamb than a sheep. But this emotional connection breaks after the old woman in the rocker says, “That’s Addie for you” (142). Marian loses her sympathy for Addie. She runs out of the room, down the hall, and out into the bright sunshine. She retrieves her apple from beneath a dark shrub. Boarding a bus, she bites into the apple without a thought of the women.
Marian enters the Old Ladies’ Home void of sympathy and leaves it without gaining sympathy. She sees the woman in the rocker as bird-like and Addie as a sheep, with red eyes. The two women are perhaps more miserable than they were before the visit, and Marian leaves without retaining sympathy for their situation. She comes to the home to give someone a physical thing, the plant, not to give of herself. Although she has a moment of intense connection with Addie, she is perhaps not permanently changed by the experience.
Related Titles
By Eudora Welty
