Water signifies life and renewal. It is water, particularly rain water, which ties the beginning of “Clytie” with the end. It trickles throughout the text, beginning with a small downpour and ending with an engulfment. It is water that claims Clytie’s life; but is water representative of Clytie’s re-birth, or as her sister Octavia feels, does water signify ruin? (Welty 83) There are also strong ties to Greek mythology within “Clytie” that also refer to the power of water.
“Clytie” is overflowing with references to water. There are several references that point to Octavia being correct in that water symbolizes decline and ruin. Clytie’s face is described as “weather-beaten” and it is only when she is thinking about the face of a child she saw playing in the street that “a look of interest and pleasure lighted her face” (Welty 83). Clytie’s cursing in the garden is described as “words which at first horrified Clytie poured in a full light stream from her throat” (Welty 87). Rain serves as an interruption to her “meditations” on the faces of Farr’s Gin (Welty 83). Although water has proven in these citations to be an unwelcome nuisance when applied to Clytie, there are also references to the regeneration that water symbolizes as well. It is these references, and several others to water, that flow through the story like a stream connecting the concept of water from the commencement of the story to the end.
The name Clytie brings connotations of weather to mind in its similarity to the word climate. She shares the conclusion of a re-birth with her namesake from Greek mythology. According to Bulfinch’s Mythology:
Clytie was a water nymph and in love with Apollo who made her no return. So she pined away, sitting all day long upon the cold ground. Nine days she sat and tasted neither food nor drink, her own tears and the chilly dew were her only food. She gazed on the sun when he rose, and as he passed through his daily course to his daily setting; she saw no other object, her face turned constantly on him. At last, they say, her limbs rooted in the ground, her face became a flower, which turns on its stem so as always to face the sun throughout its daily course.
The mythological Clytie is regenerated so that she may always look upon her fixation. Clytie from “Clytie” is regenerated to never look upon her fixation, countenances, again. “She bent her angular body further, and thrust her head into the barrel, under the water, through its glittering surface into the kind, featureless depth, and held it there” (Welty 90). In this instance, water is referred to as kind because it is featureless. Underneath its surface, it loses its reflective power. Clytie has found a way to stop looking for resemblance and to stop looking at a reflection that frightens her. Both Clyties take the shape of something permanent that satisfies their greatest desires. The mythological Clytie is granted the ability to look upon her love and nothing else. Clytie from “Clytie” compulsively searches for a resemblance to anyone but herself. When she is faced with her actual reflection, she destroys it. In contrast to the mythological Clytie, Clytie from “Clytie” kills herself to escape her obsession, whereas the former kills herself as a sacrifice to her passion.
Clytie studies the faces of others in search of a resemblance to herself. No matter how hard she tries to find semblance in others, it is only in the reflective quality of the surface of the rain barrel that provides her with “the face she had been looking for, and from which she had been separated” (Welty 90). Unlike Narcissus before her, it is not vanity that caused her to fall prey to water, it is disgust. In drowning herself in her own reflection, water is serving the purpose of both ruin and renewal. The water takes her life, but it also serves as a mechanism of independence. In one baptismal splash, she escapes the world, and a profound reflection that she could no longer face. Water seeps into the beginning of “Clytie”, dribbles through the story, and ends in an engulfment that swallows “Clytie”.
“Clytie.” http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_bullfinch_13.htm
Welty, Eudora. Clytie.” The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. Harcourt, Inc. 81-90.
