Conversely, the rest of the male characters in Petrified Man are reflective of the title itself; the men view the women as essentially inhuman and monstrous and are “’petrified’—both terrorized and turned to stone (in effect, rendered impotent)—by the women” (Berlant 3), the polar opposite of the traditional mythologized Medusa, whose monstrosity is conquered by Perseus. However, the fact that Welty’s mythological appropriation goes beyond merely symbolically reversing the gender roles to reassign phallic power and instead assigns monstrosity to both masculine and feminine characters means that Welty’s feminism intends to restructure society’s tendency to “other” men and women; instead, her short stories give them equal potential to be violent or passive in turn. Though “many critics have labeled Welty’s prose feminist,” Mark asserts that Welty’s particular brand of feminism does not reject feminism, but rather “reaffirms it, by returning to the independence and spirit at the core of political feminism” (Mark
Conversely, the rest of the male characters in Petrified Man are reflective of the title itself; the men view the women as essentially inhuman and monstrous and are “’petrified’—both terrorized and turned to stone (in effect, rendered impotent)—by the women” (Berlant 3), the polar opposite of the traditional mythologized Medusa, whose monstrosity is conquered by Perseus. However, the fact that Welty’s mythological appropriation goes beyond merely symbolically reversing the gender roles to reassign phallic power and instead assigns monstrosity to both masculine and feminine characters means that Welty’s feminism intends to restructure society’s tendency to “other” men and women; instead, her short stories give them equal potential to be violent or passive in turn. Though “many critics have labeled Welty’s prose feminist,” Mark asserts that Welty’s particular brand of feminism does not reject feminism, but rather “reaffirms it, by returning to the independence and spirit at the core of political feminism” (Mark