Understanding Memories and Traditions: A Comparative Study

mother and her husband after her mother’s death. But Eudora Welty deliberately includes a selfish character of Fay in the family to shows the important of the memories they have. Laurel discovers the significant meaning of the memories and past to her, yet she could not survive in staying fully attached to it.
Miranda, the female protagonist of Pale Horse, Pale Riders rebels her traditions and culture at the beginning of the story. Everyone looks down at her when she refuses to buy Liberty Bond because she does not believe on war. Although she is forced to serve men and injuries of the war as a women duty during the wartime in the past, her attitudes towards soldiers reveal her objection to the traditional values. “During the war, women in particular must be controlled , for with a large portion of the male absent, female independence become increasingly possible …although cututal historian have argued that the war years allowed women a wider variety of public and professional opportunities, porters stories argues otherwise (162 Titus).
Miranda becomes attracted to Adam, a masculine soldier who shows his devotion to the war and traditions. He is heroic figure according to the traditional principle. Yet Miranda was able to

manipulate him by her beauty and compassion. Within the development of the event of the story, their relation becomes stronger and that influence their way of thinking. When Miranda falls in sickness, Adam totally changes from being a heroic figure to nurse to take care of her which ends up with sacrificing himself for her. Meanwhile, Miranda has a compassion for Adam for a while, but then she refuses to keep following her myth love for deceased Adam “Iam not going with you this time” (Porter 270). Similar to Laura gives up from valuing bread board that symbolizes her deceased husband and mother. In the both stories female character take experience from memories but refuse to follow it, because these memories as southern does not bring happiness to them, yet they use it to create new identity. Southern has been through several of wars and women have significant roles in standing by men in wartime.
Both of Eudora Welty and Katherine Anne porter can be consider as feminist, because the protagonist in both of their work that I examine in this paper are female. In both story, females are holding a career of male such as Laurel who is Arts and Miranda who is reporter. The both female protagonist does not show much of female career as domestic such as cooking, cleaning or taking care of children at the same time they shows to be rebellion to the domestic duty as a traditional career of women. They could not quiet accommodate themselves to their community because of their masculinity in their behavior, and they end up with modern identity of female character that shows masculinity.
In the other hand male character are passive or they lose their power to be dominated by female throughout the story.

Such as Judge McKale, in The Optimist’s Daughter appears with the sickness and dies from the beginning of the story. Despite the fact that, the name of the character, Judge, is a reflection of high men power, yet his power is dismissed in the very beginning of the story. Similarity, with Adam and Chuck, the male characters in Pale Horse, Pale Riders, Mary Titus argues that: “Because the appropriate male behavior is now enlistment, Chuck feel publicly emasculated, for a bad lung keeps him from service” (163). Almost all the men main character dies in the both work and female struggle for creating new identity for

them.