Petrified Man By Eudora Welty Analysis

In recent decades, a great deal of scholarship has emerged regarding the topic of mythological and fairy tale appropriation in Eudora Welty’s various works, especially in her short story collection The Golden Apples. Secondary to her utilization of myth and fairy tale is the accompanying gender role reversal evident in her re-structuration and characterization of the traditional tales that she chooses to interpret. However, the fact that scholars like Rebecca Mark, Joseph Millichap, and Lauren Berlant endeavor to apply that same feminist criticism to her entire body of work rather than solely to her short story collection, The Golden Apples, adds an additional layer of understanding to the critical consensus that Welty systematically filtered …show more content…
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