SOURCE: Wall, Carey. “‘June Recital’: Virgie Rainey Saved.” In Eudora Welty: Eye of the Storyteller, edited by Dawn Trouard, pp. 14–31. Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1989.

In the following essay, Wall argues against a normative interpretation of “June Recital,” positing instead that critics should follow Welty's example of eschewing moral and behavioral judgment of the characters and focus instead on the reasons for their actions.

“They were the two of them still linked together.” 

“June Recital”'s action constructs the relations between the townspeople of Morgana, Mississippi; the music teacher, Miss Eckhart, who arrives without explanation to live and work there; and Virgie Rainey, the talented and free-spirited daughter of the town's “poor” family. Morgana holds itself apart from these “different” people—the German woman whose manners are alien and the Morgana girl who refuses to acknowledge the social supremacy the leading families assign themselves. Basically, the townspeople...