Property as a feminist dynamic in marriage Welty's DeltaIn our traditionally patriarchal society, primogeniture is the norm when it comes to property inheritance. It is unusual for someone other than an eldest son to inherit the family estate. Even more unusual is the inheritance of women who, in many localities, were not allowed to own property. Thus, the model of inheritance that Robbie notes in Delta Wedding constitutes a significant departure from cultural norms. Eudora Welty depicts a domestic politics that represents a feminist dynamic moving away from patriarchy, but without entirely escaping it. On the surface, women occupy a dominant role in the domestic politics of the novel. Robbie testifies in several ways that this is true. First, in the Fairchild family, “women were always in charge” (190). Robbie represents the attitudes of traditional patriarchy by asserting that this is not the right order of things. She “believed in her soul that men should make the law” (190). This seems to be an inverted power structure, in which women are the dominant party instead of behaving submissively towards their men. Indeed, “it was notoriously the Fairchild women who…ran the house and had everything at their fingertips, not the men” (190). The Delta appears to be a women's world in which men inhabit for the benefit of women. Another example of the inversion of patriarchy is the inheritance model. Not only do women, as a rule, inherit property, if this rule is violated, “their guilty brothers handed it over” (190). Robbie states that “in the Delta, the land belonged to the women – they only left it to the men” (190). She goes on to list three generations of property transfers that prove she observed...... middle of paper... so as to be all gracious and noble" (191). Thus, even their subversion of patriarchy fits In a sense, the Fairchild women play a different game of domestic politics than their contemporaries. They begin and end the game as masters of their own domains. They possess great power and yet are able to use it. to their advantage, they fail to change the structures of patriarchy. Their power derives from and implicitly supports male domination. Although they possess the attributes of matriarchy, men still wield considerable power by successfully usurping many. benefits patriarchy through a swap of roles, tasks and goods which gives them autonomy, even true equality If patriarchy is a prison, these women have made their cell a palace in which they are free to live. be women..