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Lily Daw and the Three Ladies
- GenresShort Stories
About the author
Eudora Welty
216 books940 followersEudora Alice Welty was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South. Her book The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America.
Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.
During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.
Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.
Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.
Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.
During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.
Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.
Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 24, 2018
Available free online here: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim...
Well, I think I like this. To be sure one has to know more! I am looking for a happy ending, but as in real life nothing is sure and certain. What happens, the outcome for Lily at the story’s end, is at least better than what had been planned for her. As I understand the events, Lily has descended from the train, albeit without her coffer! We do not know if marriage to the xylophone player will take place or if it does, if it will be happy, but it is a lot better than what the three women had planned!
Am I not making sense? Read the story. You will then understand!
As in real life events can change at the blink of an eye. Sometimes they change for the better, sometimes for the worse. Life is a gamble!
Well, I think I like this. To be sure one has to know more! I am looking for a happy ending, but as in real life nothing is sure and certain. What happens, the outcome for Lily at the story’s end, is at least better than what had been planned for her. As I understand the events, Lily has descended from the train, albeit without her coffer! We do not know if marriage to the xylophone player will take place or if it does, if it will be happy, but it is a lot better than what the three women had planned!
Am I not making sense? Read the story. You will then understand!
As in real life events can change at the blink of an eye. Sometimes they change for the better, sometimes for the worse. Life is a gamble!
January 12, 2022
This short story is a tragic tale of Lily Daw.
A letter from Ellisville Institute, Mississippi starts it all. The plot is crazy. The three ladies are funny in their ways and busy bodies.
Lily has lived a horrible life the scar alone around her neck will tell you that part of her life before the ladies interjected themselves.
A trip in a Willy's-Knight automobile built in Toledo, Ohio take them to a cedar tree at Lily's home to find her packing her hope chest. Along comes a red haired man and all the plans fly out the door and it ends with Lily in a much better situation.
Eudora Welty has you laughing at the ladies silly comments and heartbroken for Lily in this tale.
A letter from Ellisville Institute, Mississippi starts it all. The plot is crazy. The three ladies are funny in their ways and busy bodies.
Lily has lived a horrible life the scar alone around her neck will tell you that part of her life before the ladies interjected themselves.
A trip in a Willy's-Knight automobile built in Toledo, Ohio take them to a cedar tree at Lily's home to find her packing her hope chest. Along comes a red haired man and all the plans fly out the door and it ends with Lily in a much better situation.
Eudora Welty has you laughing at the ladies silly comments and heartbroken for Lily in this tale.
December 7, 2022
Not quite sure what to think of this odd but compelling story. Why did Welty end it where she did?I wanted to know what came next for Lily.
October 31, 2017
Lily Daw and the Three Ladies by Eudora Welty
With a view at the Three Fat Women of Antibes
The Optimist’s Daughter is a masterpiece, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and I have been fascinated by it.
Therefore I look forward to enjoying thoroughly the Collected Stories by the same outstanding author, which has won
- The National Book Award for Fiction
The first story in this volume is Lily Daw and the Three Ladies and it has reminded me of an account by another genius…
William Somerset Maugham and his radiant The Three Fat Women of Antibes, which share some similarities with Lily Daw:
- In both tales we have a group of three, more or less resembling women facing off another person, outsider to the group
- The three women are in these two cases upset with the acts of the alien party that does not see things the same way
- For The Three Fat Women of Antibes, the issue that is causing outrage is the diet, more precisely the lack of care for the calories in the food shown by a visitor who eats the most extravagant dishes…
In the story of Lily Daw, there is a moment when she sees, or perhaps imagines an envy that could torment her ladies:
- You is envious…these are not the words, but if I have not imagined it, Lily Daw has used is instead of are…
She is a mentally retarded person and I thought that this account is raising the issue of disability, among other questions.
The three women are taking care of this young girl, but their presence and attitude can be perceived both as humane and overbearing.
Of course, the world of today is so much different from the one depicted in the tale, or the one I was born into.
Many, maybe most transformations are positive- if people had a tendency in places to laugh at mental issues, there is a different perspective now and so is the treatment, which no longer involves electric shocks- as described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and other novels and nonfiction books on the subject.
The fact that Lily Daw thinks she wants to get married is again possible to be looked at in two different manners.
On the one hand, it might be an expression of her freedom of choice, a proof that she can still feel and decide, in spite of her disability.
On the other hand, with scandals as the strange man in the White House boasting about grabbing women’s genitals, the mogul Weinstein and his disgraceful abuses and over the past few days the accusations against the odd Kevin Spacey, the marriage of a woman with a potentially too low IQ could be perceived as harassment…
- Couldn’t it?
In the new world, I am no longer sure what the proper reactions are to various lines and propositions from this and other narratives.
For instance, when the Three Women are talking about Lily Daw’s intention to marry and who is the man, I think I laughed.
But on second thought, I may have to apologize for that, because I may have shown insensitivity and misconduct.
For the protective women are trying to find out how their protégé has met the man and if it was a proper encounter:
- Did he do something to you, asks one
- Are you the same as before, tries to clarify another
If this appeared funny on first take, I realize now that this reaction probably shows my upbringing, the medium in which I was raised and which, if not exactly demanding a Weinstein type of behavior, it did encourage a macho attitude and condemned too much sensitivity- what am I saying? Any type of delicacy would have been taken as poofy.
So maybe you let me know:
- Which is it? Can a reader laugh at the worry of the Three Women that their protégé could have enjoyed one of the definite pleasures of life?
- Or this should be the instance when a morose take is required, with concern for whatever could have taken place?
If I am no longer sure in regards to that dialogue, there is definitely the tragic aspect of Lily Daw having had an abusive, horrific father, who not only had beaten her, but tried to cut off her head at one point!
With a view at the Three Fat Women of Antibes
The Optimist’s Daughter is a masterpiece, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and I have been fascinated by it.
Therefore I look forward to enjoying thoroughly the Collected Stories by the same outstanding author, which has won
- The National Book Award for Fiction
The first story in this volume is Lily Daw and the Three Ladies and it has reminded me of an account by another genius…
William Somerset Maugham and his radiant The Three Fat Women of Antibes, which share some similarities with Lily Daw:
- In both tales we have a group of three, more or less resembling women facing off another person, outsider to the group
- The three women are in these two cases upset with the acts of the alien party that does not see things the same way
- For The Three Fat Women of Antibes, the issue that is causing outrage is the diet, more precisely the lack of care for the calories in the food shown by a visitor who eats the most extravagant dishes…
In the story of Lily Daw, there is a moment when she sees, or perhaps imagines an envy that could torment her ladies:
- You is envious…these are not the words, but if I have not imagined it, Lily Daw has used is instead of are…
She is a mentally retarded person and I thought that this account is raising the issue of disability, among other questions.
The three women are taking care of this young girl, but their presence and attitude can be perceived both as humane and overbearing.
Of course, the world of today is so much different from the one depicted in the tale, or the one I was born into.
Many, maybe most transformations are positive- if people had a tendency in places to laugh at mental issues, there is a different perspective now and so is the treatment, which no longer involves electric shocks- as described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and other novels and nonfiction books on the subject.
The fact that Lily Daw thinks she wants to get married is again possible to be looked at in two different manners.
On the one hand, it might be an expression of her freedom of choice, a proof that she can still feel and decide, in spite of her disability.
On the other hand, with scandals as the strange man in the White House boasting about grabbing women’s genitals, the mogul Weinstein and his disgraceful abuses and over the past few days the accusations against the odd Kevin Spacey, the marriage of a woman with a potentially too low IQ could be perceived as harassment…
- Couldn’t it?
In the new world, I am no longer sure what the proper reactions are to various lines and propositions from this and other narratives.
For instance, when the Three Women are talking about Lily Daw’s intention to marry and who is the man, I think I laughed.
But on second thought, I may have to apologize for that, because I may have shown insensitivity and misconduct.
For the protective women are trying to find out how their protégé has met the man and if it was a proper encounter:
- Did he do something to you, asks one
- Are you the same as before, tries to clarify another
If this appeared funny on first take, I realize now that this reaction probably shows my upbringing, the medium in which I was raised and which, if not exactly demanding a Weinstein type of behavior, it did encourage a macho attitude and condemned too much sensitivity- what am I saying? Any type of delicacy would have been taken as poofy.
So maybe you let me know:
- Which is it? Can a reader laugh at the worry of the Three Women that their protégé could have enjoyed one of the definite pleasures of life?
- Or this should be the instance when a morose take is required, with concern for whatever could have taken place?
If I am no longer sure in regards to that dialogue, there is definitely the tragic aspect of Lily Daw having had an abusive, horrific father, who not only had beaten her, but tried to cut off her head at one point!
September 3, 2024
While it isn’t the most exciting script, it’s still decent enough for me to enjoy it. It’s simple and straight to the point, and although the whole vibe of the play might put you to sleep, it manages to keep you awake with witty dialogue. The differences in the three ladies that take care of Lily Daw is one of the things I enjoyed the most.
February 21, 2019
What is nice about Eudora Welty’s short stories are their Southern Gothic themes, their realistic characters and ventures, and that they can be read inside of an hour. Three women decide that Lily Daws, apparently slow, should be committed to an institution, and—
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews