Born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1909 Eudora Welty was clearly influenced both by her mother’s love of reading and her father’s interest in photography. By 1931, when her father died of leukaemia, she had obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin and then attended Columbia University Graduate School of Business where she focused on advertising. Returning to Jackson she worked for Jackson’s first radio station followed by the Works Progress Administration. On her web site Margret Bing outlines the key activities of the WPA in 1935 as a Federal initiative to provide work for both blue and white collar workers. In the case of white collar workers this was particularly in the field of public art, music, theatre and writing (Bing). At this time Welty was engaged in taking photographs of Mississippi people. A collection of these photographs was published in 1971 in One Time One Place: Mississippi in the Depression: a Snapshot Album. In the introduction to the 1996 edition William Maxwell when commenting on her work quotes a sentence from her novel, The Optimist’s Daughter: “The mystery of how little we know of people is no greater than the mystery of how much” (5), which captures the lightness of touch she employs to signify the essence of the characters in Ladies in Spring. Welty went on to right a range of short stories and novels receiving recognition both in America and Europe until her death in 2001. This lightness of touch and photographer’s eye is also evident in the motif of colour used to sharpen the image particularly of the characters in her short story Ladies in Spring, as for example in, “dressed alike in overalls and faded coats, [...] one black headed, one tow headed” (1), Miss Hattie’s blac... ... middle of paper ... ... creation of communities, who is responsible for setting the moral standards and is it now the responsibility of women? Bibliography Bing, Margaret. “A Brief Overview of the WPA.” The Bienes Museum of The Modern Book. 07 04 2010 . Kincaid, James R. “Introduction to Idylls of the King.” 2001. Victorian Web. 07 04 2010 . Watson, Ruth D. “Reticent Beauty and Promiscuous Joy: Textual Framing in Eudora Welty's "The Bride of Innisfallen and Other Stories".” Southern Literary Journal Spring (2000): 42-58. Welty, Eudora. “Ladies in Spring.” Ford, Richard. The New Granta Book of the American Short Story. London: Granta Books, 2007. 1-13. —. One Time One Place: Mississippi in the Depression: a Snapshot Album. Mississippi: University Press Mississippi, 1996.
Volume III: P-Z. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Print. The. James, Edward, Janet James, and Paul Boyer. Notable American Women, 1607-1950.
Harris, Susan K.. "'But is it any good?': Evaluating Nineteenth-Century American Women's Fiction." American Literature 63 (March 1991): 42-61.
Welty Acknowledges her mother, and her impressionability in influencing her has the eager reader, great author and person that she is when writing this book. Welty remembers her mother “picking up The Man in lower ten while [her] hair got dried enough to unroll from a load of kid curlers trying to make [her] look like my idol, Mary Pickford” this suggests that if she copied both Mary Pickford and her mother, her mother was also her idol because her mother “was very sharing of [the] feeling of Insatiability”. This shows that Welty picked up reading from her mother and that’s and Welty’s mother knew her daughter was easily influenced which is why she said Welty was “too impressionable”. This then reveals to readers the root of Welty’s compassion for books as she was growing up. Welty also remembers “a generation later… “her mother “reading the new issue of time magazine while taking the part of the Wolf in a game ... with the children”. This shows that the passion within Welty’s mother, that influenced Welty as a young child to read, has not burned out. Due to that wetly wants readers to understand that her mother has influenced her whole life and career with her burning passion to read. This tells readers that Eudora Welty’s own passion for reading will never cease to
Eudora Welty was not silent when it came to social issues. In her own, sometimes-quiet ways, she fought discrimination and racism and inequality. She voiced her opinions and beliefs. Her stories can speak loudly of the injustices of a tainted society, but these protests are only heard by those who immerse themselves in her work, by those who reach beneath the surface to find the true meaning of the subtle events that comprise her stories.
Often, the 1930s are classified as the age of economic depression. Although true, the decade has proved to be a time of reform and hope. In the midwest a series of windstorms occurred accompanied by a harsh drought causing the Dust Bowl, while in the more industrialized north, citizens struggled to find jobs. From song lyrics to baseball cards, artifacts from the decade rejuvenated the once crushed spirits of the American people. However, not all Americans regained a sense of hope, and instead some resorted to toxic ways to ease their minds. Moreover, as the Great Depression trudged on through the 1930s, American citizens searched for a way to escape their hardships, yet remained hopeful for a brighter future.
Noelle M. “Symbolism in Eudora Welty’s ‘A Worn Path’” Study mode N.P., Oct 2012. Web. 17 Mar 2014.
“The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.” Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition (2004): Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 3 Feb. 2010.
Abrams, M.H. and Greenblatt, Stephen eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Seventh Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001.
“Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid is essentially a set of instructions given by an adult, who is assumed to be the mother of the girl, who is laying out the rules of womanhood, in Caribbean society, as expected by the daughter’s gender. These instructions set out by the mother are related to topics including household chores, manners, cooking, social conduct, and relationships. The reader may see these instructions as demanding, but these are a mother’s attempt, out of care for the daughter, to help the daughter to grow up properly. The daughter does not appear to have yet reached adolescence, however, her mother believes that her current behavior will lead her to a life of promiscuity. The mother postulates that her daughter can be saved from a life of promiscuity and ruin by having domestic knowledge that would, in turn also, empower her as a productive member in their community and the head of her future household. This is because the mother assumes that a woman’s reputation and respectability predisposes the quality of a woman’s life in the community.
Katherine Mansfield’s “Miss Brill” protagonist, Miss Brill, portrays an educated, older white Caucasian female in France, seems to the reader to be alone, deranged, and miserable with an extensive imagination. Mansfield doesn’t say if Miss Brill is married or not; however, the reader would assume she isn’t due to how lonely she is. The only time Miss Brill gets to interact with people is on Sundays when she goes to the park to eavesdrop and “supposedly” listen to the band play. She is so deranged that she doesn’t even assume eavesdropping is wrong. She has lost all touch reality, imagining she is a lead actress in a play which in actuality is she was in a play her role would be minimized to an extra. However, in Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path”
“Women’s roles were constantly changing and have not stopped still to this day.” In the early 1900s many people expected women to be stay at home moms and let the husbands support them. But this all changes in the 1920s, women got the right to vote and began working from the result of work they have done in the war. Altogether in the 1920s women's roles have changed drastically.
Solomon, Barbara H., ed. Rediscoveries: American Short Stories by Women, 1832-1916. New York: Penguin Group, 1994.
Solomon, Barbara H., ed. Rediscoveries: American Short Stories by Women, 1832-1916. New York: Penguin Group, 1994.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.
The Portrayal of Women in American Literature Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different way than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may have represented his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays her as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby, the main female character, Daisy Buchanan, is portrayed by, Nick, the narrator, only by her superficial qualities.