Jackie Molloy
Mrs. von Schiller
English 11 Honors
May 4 2015
Eudora Welty, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, successfully portrays a feminist perspective in a southern society through the role of the female protagonist Laurel by using imagery and symbolism to relate to the domain of women’s experiences in her last autobiographical novel, The Optimist’s Daughter. Eudora Welty encapsulates her feminine experiences through symbols and images. Welty’s last novel, is known to be one of her most elusive works. In the piece of literature, there is a certain degree of uncertainty triggered by symbols and images. The symbols and images used bring thematic unity.
Welty is most known for her novels and short stories about the southern part of the …show more content…
Many say Welty’s biggest accomplishment is winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1973, for her famous work, The Optimist’s Daughter. “[Eudora Welty] is an author of works that makes use of the resources of our language at its highest level. From interior life, the world of fantasy and imagination, is the subject of much of her fiction. Welty understands the Southern culture, and her writing makes it clear that she is fascinated by it” (Brooks 1). Welty understands the Southern culture and is better at portraying it then most authors are. She helps the reader understand, even if they have never been to the south, that there are many cultural differences. Welty also one many other notable awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Order of the South, and twenty other numerous awards and honors. Welty is the first author that is still alive to have her works published by the Library of America, which is a tremendous accomplishment for Welty being a female writer prominently in the 1900s. Welty was born and raised, then continued to live in Jackson, Mississippi where her house is designated as a National …show more content…
The reintegration of her character constitutes a feminine revision of a traditional sequence in male literary history and is significant in the development in the Southern novel, a genre which, female characters have historically either found resolution in martyrdom or in submitting to cultural exploration (Orr 78). Welty’s feminine style allows readers to decode the symbols in her literature from a feminist perspective. The symbols show Welty’s feminist concern that she expresses in her writing. The Optimist’s Daughter is filled with with the female teller; the ritual, the family, and the narration develops through the use of rhetorical devices. Many still question Welty’s depiction of the “Old South”, chastising her for dwelling on the historically segregated South that keeps race very separate from each other at the cost of neglecting highly charged racial issues of the “New South”(Johnston 9). Welty writes stories how she wants to write them, not how everyone thinks she should write them. This makes Welty such a stand out. She is a women, and she has an opinion and a voice. “Welty creates a women’s world in which women is creator and controller in which there is a gap between the sexual worlds, and in which patriarchal myths are devalorized even as they are affirmed to operate”(Weston 1). Women were not the creator and controller in many novels in the 1900s, and
Mrs. von Schiller
English 11 Honors
May 4 2015
Eudora Welty, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, successfully portrays a feminist perspective in a southern society through the role of the female protagonist Laurel by using imagery and symbolism to relate to the domain of women’s experiences in her last autobiographical novel, The Optimist’s Daughter. Eudora Welty encapsulates her feminine experiences through symbols and images. Welty’s last novel, is known to be one of her most elusive works. In the piece of literature, there is a certain degree of uncertainty triggered by symbols and images. The symbols and images used bring thematic unity.
Welty is most known for her novels and short stories about the southern part of the …show more content…
Many say Welty’s biggest accomplishment is winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1973, for her famous work, The Optimist’s Daughter. “[Eudora Welty] is an author of works that makes use of the resources of our language at its highest level. From interior life, the world of fantasy and imagination, is the subject of much of her fiction. Welty understands the Southern culture, and her writing makes it clear that she is fascinated by it” (Brooks 1). Welty understands the Southern culture and is better at portraying it then most authors are. She helps the reader understand, even if they have never been to the south, that there are many cultural differences. Welty also one many other notable awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Order of the South, and twenty other numerous awards and honors. Welty is the first author that is still alive to have her works published by the Library of America, which is a tremendous accomplishment for Welty being a female writer prominently in the 1900s. Welty was born and raised, then continued to live in Jackson, Mississippi where her house is designated as a National …show more content…
The reintegration of her character constitutes a feminine revision of a traditional sequence in male literary history and is significant in the development in the Southern novel, a genre which, female characters have historically either found resolution in martyrdom or in submitting to cultural exploration (Orr 78). Welty’s feminine style allows readers to decode the symbols in her literature from a feminist perspective. The symbols show Welty’s feminist concern that she expresses in her writing. The Optimist’s Daughter is filled with with the female teller; the ritual, the family, and the narration develops through the use of rhetorical devices. Many still question Welty’s depiction of the “Old South”, chastising her for dwelling on the historically segregated South that keeps race very separate from each other at the cost of neglecting highly charged racial issues of the “New South”(Johnston 9). Welty writes stories how she wants to write them, not how everyone thinks she should write them. This makes Welty such a stand out. She is a women, and she has an opinion and a voice. “Welty creates a women’s world in which women is creator and controller in which there is a gap between the sexual worlds, and in which patriarchal myths are devalorized even as they are affirmed to operate”(Weston 1). Women were not the creator and controller in many novels in the 1900s, and