Eudora Welty on the Woman’s Question

Eudora Welty reveals a world brimming with life – natural, sensual, rational, and moral. She invests in her characters a boundless capacity as male and female, for bodying forth the rich diversity. They bid for attention when they save their lives in obedience to ancient laws of birth and death or when they pursue a private vision heroically. As Simon de Beauvior says, “We are accustomed to thinking of these two human destinies as characteristically sexual.” Traditionally the woman’s place is in the home. She is the mother who gives us life and with it our morality.

Welty belongs to the transition period in South America. Her short stories generally reflect the feminine point of view. The present article deals with the author’s opinions concerning the gender difference, the importance of place, characterization etc.

Welty has a good family ground in which she never experienced any gender difference. Both her parents were educated and she was treated equally with others in her childhood. She was fond of reading books from their home library. Her childhood reading is reflected much later in her writings. During her time some of the writers and critics were of the opinion that women couldn’t write good stories. They expressed their own doubts about female writers. But Welty says that she had never been handicapped in writing for being a woman even when the society was discriminating between the male and the female. As she says, “I am a woman, in writing fiction imagination comes ahead of sex. A writer’s got to live inside all characters, male, female, old, young, to live inside any other, in male or female is sub­-ordinate...” Moreover she never showed any kind of interest in politics or any movements related to it. When she was questioned in this regard she said that she did not believe in any kind of female liberation movement. As she says, “I’m not interested in any kind of a feminine repartee. 1 don’t care what sex people are when they write. I just want the result to be a good book. All that talk of women’s lib doesn’t apply at all to women writers. We have always been able to do what we wished. I couldn’t feel less deprived as a woman to be writing.” She adds that she was never deprived of any privilege that men enjoy.

Even when there was a conspicuous discrimination between men and women, Welty did experience such a one, except once i.e., with an Editor of a Magazine. As she says, “...I’ve never met so far as, I know, with any prejudice from editors because I was a woman with the one exception of my story “Petrified Man”, which was turned down by Esquire Magazine because I was a woman...I was too ignorant to know that they did not take stories by women.”

Welty in her short stories depicts the kinds of responsibilities and commitments women have. She also shows the plight of women who suffer in fulfilling them. She believes strongly that women have more commitment and responsibility than men. They were ready to sacrifice anything for the sake of the same. She says: “...although I didn’t marry, I had a family that was working with and helping to care of..” But in her case these responsibilities never caused her any disturbance to her career and have not taken anything away. As she further says, “….human responsibilities come first. That would be blaming another person if you didn’t get your writing done. I am speaking absolutely personally. My life was easier…I’m sure, but I grew up in the depression, which wasn’t too easy, and my father died the year I got out of college, which wasn’t too easy, but that was just all in the way life was. You can write no matter what goes...” By listening these words we can conclude that her philosophy on life is that depressions, ups and downs in human life are part. The people should accept them the way they come up on each individual. They should withstand the adverse situation with courage and a determined mind.

Like Tille Olsen, Welty also believes that women have always been at a disadvantage. But personally, as earlier stated, she never experienced any disadvantage and she has never aligned herself with any writer’s group. As an artist at work she has remained a solitary figure. She experienced consideration, kindness and politeness instead.

In Welty’s opinion women’s movements do not achieve anything. Some of the female chauvinists loudly demanded equality, for getting that rights cannot be demanded or gained but equality should be obtained by means of assertion.

Most of Welty’s characters suffer and experience the problems and difficulties, which were common to women in general. Some of her characters such as Laurel Mc Kelva, Sabina, Virgie Raine, Laura, Miss Eckhart have been depicted differently from the other female characters portrayed as revolting are forced to do so under the pressure of circumstances. For example, Sabina slaps her husband in front of many people for being oppressed and insulted for a long period. Her patience was lost. This shows us that Welty is not a Feminist but Feminine in her character-portrayal. In general, her characters do not stem from feminism. Circumstances have forced them to deviate and go against the accepted norms. In fact, sometimes, she became critical of the feminists who agitated and raised slogans and made demands over petty reasons. She is of the opinion that “….Some of the movements, women are making fools of themselves, and I’m sorry for that, because it’s cast a very sad light on the real facts of the matter”. Even though, Welty was against Feminism as a political movement she admits that it has improved the position of women. She bitterly criticized feminists, when they tried to make the entire women folk look comic. Welty says, “I hate the grotesque quality of it…..I think it should be done, but if it’s making comedians all of us, I don’t know that it’s worth it. It can be done in another way.” By this we can conclude that Welty is neither a supporter of Feminism nor a strong representative of the traditional woman.

Welty’s views on the importance of “place in fiction”.

Eudora Welty strongly believes that fiction must be firmly grounded in “place.” Irrespective of her characters and the universality of her themes, she has depicted most of her stories in southern culture and Mississippi in particular. The function of place is primarily to attach precise local values to feelings.

As Frederick J. Hoffman says,
“Place in fiction is the named, identified, concrete, exact and exacting and therefore credible, gathering – spot of all that has been felt, is about to be experienced, in the novel’s progress. Location pertains to feeling, feeling profoundly pertains to place, place in history partakes of feelings, as feeling about history partakes of place.”

Thus the place obviously derives from its existence in time and the people living in it.

Place in Welty’s view has come to mean “home”, the family. The home is a place arranged by man for a peaceful private life according to certain norms. In a fundamental sense the entire south is a family, rather than a state or a region. According to Andrew Lytle, particular families were, “The institution of southern life.” The emphasis on family as an essential feature of southern life is generally evident in the works of writers belonging to the American south.

The southern writers according to Welty, retain their natural way of looking at things, the sense of the continuity of life and the sense of the family. The southerners tend to live in one place where they can see whole lives unfold around them. It gives them a natural sense of the narrative, of the dramatic content of life; a form for the story comes readily to hand. Welty says that place is “a source of inspiration” and giving her knowledge. As she says, “...as a writer, I think ground matters most in how well it teaches you to look around and see clearly what’s there.”

Eudora Welty’s Views on Character Portrayal

According to Welty in characterization, ground is very important because it is “something shapes people and it is the world in which they act that makes their experiences – what they act for and react against. And with its population a place produces the whole world in which a person lives his life. It furnishes the economic ground that he grows up in and the folkways and the stories that come down to him in his family. It is the fountainhead of his knowledge and experience upon which we grow further.”

The southern writers have the talent for tale telling. Children of the southern families are receivers of family stories and active participants in the oral tradition. So the dialogues written by the author most of the time are colloquial in a typically Southern style. Having known this tradition, Welty is distinctive in tale-telling when compared to other southern writers.

As Welty says, “All the characters are conceptions of the imaginations, which are invented to carry out what I want to do them in the story. I endow them with things I have observed, dreamed or understood, but no one represent a real person.” Although she emphasizes that all her characters are imaginary, one can find familiar people around. Thus her characters are real people. Through her characters Welty has shown the transition period In the American South. The impact of North America is shown through some of her southern characters. She is neither against change nor she strongly supports the traditional woman. She is of the opinion that in spite of change, the southerners have a great respect and reverence for the life of the family and the sense of history.
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