She manipulates others with her downward gaze, but her fixed position gives her limited perspective. She peers out from behind curtains, never seeing with a clear, unobstructed view. The language Welty uses for Octavia has her always gazing downward. When she let the curtain drop at last, Clytie would be left there speechless” (106). When Clytie goes to the garden to curse as a way to vent her stifled emotions, Octavia’s gaze from the window silences her: “in the middle of her words Clytie glanced up to where Octavia, at her window, looked down at her.
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Knowledge of Octavia’s desires prompts Clytie to “Try all the doors and windows to make sure that everything was locked up absolutely tight” (107).
Octavia’s unwillingness to come downstairs limits her movement, but she continues to place restrictions on the kind of traffic and change that occur on the lower floor. Clytie runs the house according to Octavia’s unchanging likes and dislikes: “Octavia, who never came all the way downstairs for any reason, would never have forgiven her for an open window …” (102). She remains upstairs and controls her surroundings from her bird’s-eye view of the world. Other textual references describe Octavia’s fixed position.
When Welty removes Octavia’s hesitation, “After a moment,” and her turnaround, she successfully removes some of Octavia’s humanity. An unbending will and a fixity of position characterize her she uses her voice rather than her body to coerce others into action. This deletion reinforces Octavia’s rigidity and immobility. In A Curtain of Green, Welty deletes the final sentence that has Octavia turn around and walk upstairs, and the paragraph concludes, “for she was usually calling” (101). After a moment she turned and walked back up the dark stairs” (54). The Southern Review version reads: “‘Gerald is awake now, and so is Papa,’ said Octavia, in the same vindictive voice-a loud voice, for she was usually calling. The first substantive revision deletes a movement made by Octavia, the perpetually angry sister who never leaves the house. The changes demonstrate Welty’s concern for the nuances of the controlled movement and position of the characters within the space of the story. These three revisions emphasize the positions taken by the members of the Farr family and their direction and movement in relation to each other. McDonald, Jr., notes three substantive changes. First published in the summer of 1941 in the Southern Review, the story has only a few revisions for the fall 1941 A Curtain of Green publication. Throughout the story, the Farrs trap themselves and control each other their restrained movements hinder them from functioning productively outside of their house or peaceably inside the boundaries of the family. She eventually commits suicide by holding her face in a rain barrel after concluding that her desire to connect with others cannot coexist with the Farr family rules. When she runs through town, she examines faces and looks for a face that she lost long ago. Clytie is the only Farr who has not entirely given up association with people outside the family. The family consists of James Farr, the bedridden, comatose father Gerald, the son who supposedly runs a furniture store but spends most of his time in bed Octavia, the reclusive daughter whose wits have left her, according to the townspeople and Clytie, the daughter who cooks, relays messages, and on occasion runs wildly through the town. The Farrs no longer have the financial clout or social power they had once as an important wealthy family of their town. Eudora Welty’s story “Clytie” depicts the breakdown of the Farr family, whose rigid codes of behavior prevent individual movements or connections outside the controlled relationships of the family.
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