Coming to Age in Eudora Welty’s The Little Store

Coming to Age in Eudora Welty’s The Little Store

Eudora Welty is one of the leading American writers of the twentieth century. In her work “The Little Store,” Welty recollects from her memories of growing up. She humbly admitted that she lived a “sheltered life” growing up in the South as a woman. From this perspective, Eudora writes her short story as a means to tell her passage into adulthood.

Growing up in the capital of Mississippi, Eudora lives only a few blocks from the capitol. She remembers from many different trips to the Little Store various moments of her childhood and compiles them into one trip. She encourages the reader by bringing realism to the work through the use of sensory writing. During each leg of her travel, some object creates a tangent in her mind of other memories. Although the story begins from a child’s perspective, there are hints of maturity arriving. The maturity provides “facts of life and death” (Welty 82) to Eudora.

Eudora is very talented with the use of sensory imagery. She describes her mother and household in terms of foods that have strong tastes, such as blackberries and lemons, which have distinctive aromas. When Eudora arrives at the store later in the work, she is overwhelmed by her grandiose surroundings. She knows she can have whatever she would like, from sodas, to fireworks, to sweets galore. She is enticed to the point where the readers become involved by thinking of what it is they would choose themselves. She uses senses to pull the reader into her story and it makes the story more realistic. However, in the end, this is a fact of life for Eudora: she cannot always have everything she wants. She must choose wisely or face the consequences.

After pulling the reader into the story, Eudora makes an attempt to relate to her audience. She would “bet that nickel that would be left over that all over the country … the neighborhood grocery played a similar part in growing up” (79).