Eudora Welty: A Study Of The Short Fiction. - Review - book reviews

Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1997 by Jennifer Thomas

EUDORA WELTY: A STUDY OF THE SHORT FICTION by Carol Ann Johnston. Twayne's Studies in Short Fiction Series. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997. xix 259 pages. $24.95.

"I'm a short-story writer who writes novels the hard way, and by accident," confessed Eudora Welty in a 1972 interview. Although her accidental novels fascinate readers and critics, some of the most influential recent Welty studies have focused on her short fiction. Carol Ann Johnston's study emphasizes feminist readings of Welty's work, and acknowledges such important scholarship as Peter Schmidt's The Heart of the Story (1991) and Rebecca Mark's The Dragon's Blood (1994). Johnston's analysis proves less nuanced than some of her predecessors', but her book offers a thoughtful introduction to Welty studies.

Like other entries in Twayne's series, Johnston's book opens with a critical section. Johnston borrows many of the double-stranded images that Welty herself frequently employs in her autobiography, fiction and essays: independence and guilt, sheltered life and daring intellect, love and separateness. Focusing almost exclusively on the female characters in Welty's short story collections, Johnston "look[s] at these connections among these books in terms of Welty's developing sophistication as she weighs the benefits against the perils of shelter." For Johnston, this development follows a clear trajectory throughout the collections: from isolated individual women living sheltered lives in A Curtain of Green; to female characters with a burgeoning awareness of the limits of their sheltered isolation in The Wide Net; to the self-realized women of The Golden Apples, led by Virgie Rainey. Because The Golden Apples serves as the tour de force in Johnston's study, Welty's next collection, The Bride of the Innisfallen, represents "a leveling of Welty's concerns." Johnston moves on to make cogent observations about Welty's WPA photography and argues for the visual quality of Welty's narrative method. Emphasizing "Re-Vision," Johnston ties the visual to Welty's thematic emphasis on myth (Greek, Celtic) and gendered re-evaluations of cultural plots for heroism, the artistic impulse, and sexual freedom.

Johnston's useful selections for her second section, "The Writer," include an interview with Hermione Lee, a selection that confirms Johnston's sense of the writer's "double" life; careful excerpts from Welty's autobiography; and Welty's essay "Place in Fiction." When choosing "The Critics" for her final section, Johnston includes essays every Welty student should know: Katherine Anne Porter's introduction to A Curtain of Green and Reynolds Price's introduction to Welty's Collected Stories, for example. Placing these two alongside each other also allows us to hear both the mentor and the protege speak of Welty and her craft. Robert Penn Warren's "Love and Separateness" seems a predictable choice given Johnston's thesis. Contemporary critics Daniele Pitavy-Souques and Patricia Yaeger are excellent choices for inclusion, showing recent critical assessment of Welty within currents of modernism and feminism.

Occasionally, Johnston oversimplifies the terms of the stories she analyzes. An angry old man flaps open his bathrobe, exposing himself to young girls taking their piano lessons in "June Recital," a display that provides, according to Johnston "a blatant show of phallic strength, [as] he attempts to silence the female voice." In the context of the story, however, the narrator freely voices her estimate of this "old turkey gobbler" and suggests he poses no such potent threat. Some of Johnston's most convincing readings concern Welty's identification with her characters, refuting the assumption that the heroine is the author's stand-in. By keeping her eye on the writer of "June Recital," Johnston astutely reminds us: "Welty identifies with Miss Eckhart, but she writes Virgie's story." This observation, and others like it, make Johnston's work a sound starting point for new readers and students of Welty.

JENNIFER THOMAS

Newberry College