(This Essay was written for the Litchatte Blog by Mary Ramsey Evans, a First Friday Book Club (Richmond, Virginia) facilitator).
Last month, I had the privilege of attending the Eudora Welty Society’s conference in Charleston, South Carolina. This year’s conference, entitled, “The Continuous Thread of Revelation”: Eudora Welty Reconsidered,” drew Welty scholars from all over the country, many of whom have spent their entire academic careers researching and writing about the iconic Southern writer.
Welty was the writer of more than forty short stories, five novels, one autobiography, one collection of essays, and one children’s book. In addition, she was a skilled photographer who published at least two books containing her photographs. Considered by many scholars to be the grand dame of Southern literature, Welty won eight O. Henry Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award among the many accolades she earned throughout her long writing career. Known as a consummate storyteller, Eudora Welty created characters whose lives reflected the human condition common to us all, often using humor as a vehicle. Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi in 1909, Welty was a keen observer of many storytellers, often reflecting not only what they said, but also how and where they said it. In One Writer’s Beginnings, a collection of autobiographical essays she writes,
Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. [Emphasis added]
Although I am not an academic in the class of the scholars gathered in Charleston for the conference, (not by a LONG shot!) I did focus my graduate studies on the literature of the American South, and I am an avid fan of Welty’s work. So, my sister (Ann Day) and I, along with another equally avid Welty fan, felt a bit like wedding crashers in a room filled with these academic luminaries. There were even two scholars in attendance whose work I had cited in graduate research papers AND the author whose work was the subject of my thesis! Needless to say, it was both intimidating and exhilarating to be there to listen and learn about the most recent research into Welty’s work from these amazing scholars. Also encouraging was the attendance of several young scholars (Ph.D. candidates), validating Welty’s legacy and ensuring her continued presence in the canon of American literature. As we listened to these renowned scholars read their (sometimes lengthy!) papers, we couldn’t help but wonder at the wealth and depth of new research presented. How could there be anything NEW to be learned about someone about whom so much has been written? A lot, apparently, which is a testament to the genius of Eudora Welty.
Now that I have established myself as a huge Welty fan (one who was willing to sit through three days of listening to papers being read out loud!), you can imagine how excited I was on March 1, 2019 when the Classic Book Club (Richmond, Virginia) met to review and discuss three of Welty’s short stories: “The Petrified Man,” Why I Live at the P.O.,” and “A Worn Path.” Ann Day (my sister and fellow conference attendee) led a spirited discussion on three Welty’s short stories that focused on her use of humor to bring her characters to life, her emphasis on “place,” and finally, her use of the mythological quest to engage and entertain readers. Ann began with enough biographical information on Welty, including her family life in Mississippi, to assist new readers understanding of the lens through which she develops her stories, perhaps most importantly revealing Welty’s reasons for emphasizing place in her fiction. To her, it is the foundation upon which any good story is built. In her essay “Place in Fiction,” Welty writes,
The truth is, fiction depends for its life on place. Location is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of “What happened? Who’s here? Who’s coming?” and that is the heart’s field.
With this in mind, we began our discussion of “Petrified Man,” which tells a story about a very serious topic, i.e., rape, but is told in what on first glance might seem an inappropriate voice, i.e., humorous. Examples of humor abound in the story, as in the passage below. Note also how Welty’s character’s diction and grammar place her in the American South:
“Honey, me an’ Fred, we met in a rumble seat eight months ago and we was practically on what you might call the way to the altar inside of half an hour,’ said Leota in a guttural voice .
And, although the place where this and the other stories happen is clearly a small town in the American South, the relationships between her characters could happen anywhere. In other words, Welty’s narrative depicts characters with very human relationships that any reader can understand. Indeed, this is the strength of Welty’s writing–its universality. Participants in the discussion noted Welty’s use of humor to engage her readers and convey that all-important sense of place. The events of the story take place in a beauty shop where the local ladies meet to have their hair done, but also to gossip about their friends and neighbors. And, while the reader can laugh as these ladies banter casually back and forth about the secrets and lives of the townspeople, something far more serious lurks just below the surface of one conversation about a “petrified man” who turns out to be a serial rapist! Welty was a well-known reader and fan of Agatha Christie, so in this story, she gives readers something of a surprising answer to the question, whodunit? And, as participants observed, Welty challenges contemporary notions of race by making the guilty party a white man—this at a time when many black men were being accused of rape by white women. Finally, participants also spotted a feminist subtext in the story. Again, Welty uses humor and subtlety. Leota must keep another woman’s child while they are both working even though neither her husband nor the boy’s father works.
All Fred does is lay around the house like a rug.
In the next column, Mary discussed “Why I Live at the P.O.” and “A Worn Path.” Send comments or questions to Mary to Litchatte.com For information about Litchatte or the Classic Book Club, write: ellisonms2@vcu.edu
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