Gothic Traditions and the Narrative Techniques of Eudora Welty

Studies in Short Fiction, Spring, 1996 by Will Brantley

Gothic Traditions and the Narrative Techniques of Eudora Welty by Ruth D. Weston. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1994. xii 202 pages. $25.

A major but sometimes elusive twentieth-century artist, Eudora Welty has been well served by a spate of recent booklength studies, none of which is more impressive than Ruth D. Weston's Gothic Traditions and Narrative Techniques in the Fiction of Eudora Wilty. Weston's aim, as her title makes clear, is to understand Welty within a tradition to which she has been often linked (though rarely with any insightful analysis). Weston shows that Welty "utilizes the tradition not as the popular Gothic (upper case) genre of `escape' fiction but as a core of gothic (lower case) materials--plots, settings, characters, image patterns, and vocabulary--that operate in her stories in concert with many other literary conventions." In this superbly written book, Weston demonstrates the many ways in which Welty's "connection to the Gothic tradition is far from tenuous," and the various ways in which this tradition provides "answers to some of the most puzzling, and most intriguing, aspects of a fiction that (Welty] herself described, especially in its relation to myth, in terms of its `mystery and magic.'"

Weston examines those settings that evoke a sense of mystery (she makes a number of telling comparisons between Welty and Hawthorne); she then focuses on "the theme of enclosure and escape of the `female Gothic'--a generic misnomer," she asserts, "since all forms of the Gothic offer 'deep revelations about gender, ego, and power.'" This comment suggests the tenor of Weston's approach: she draws liberally but carefully from the critics who have theorized about the gothic impulse in both British and American literature. The result is the broadest and most illuminating contextualization of Welty's large body of writing to appear since Peter Schmidt's 7be Heart of the Story (1992).

Weston's readings of individual works will provide surprises for even Welty's most attentive readers. While the gothic elements are perhaps readily apparent in a work like "Clytie," one might not expect to see them in a story like "The Worn Path," but even here Weston's argument, rooted in the story's images and details, is quite persuasive. "The 'ghost' in this story is only a scarecrow," she observes; "but [Phoenix Jackson] is menaced as well by a real black dog and by `big dead trees like black men with one arm,' and a row of weathered houses appears in gothic array like `old women under a spell sitting there.'" Weston reminds us that Welty even felt compelled to "explain the story's motivation . . . to readers who believed the grandson, too, was a ghost, so fully `mysterious' is this most-magic work."

Weston's reading of Fay in The Optimists Daughter is, to my mind, the most satisfying explanation of what may be Welty's most taxing character. Weston examines Fay as the functional alter ego of Laurel McKelva Hand, a pairing in which the author "demolishes the vixen and heroine stereotypes of female characterization even as she affirms the psychological validity of the underlying mythic pattern of the `wicked stepmother' plot." For Weston, Fay is "the principal agent of Laurel's awakening `to the living moment,'" and thus "functions not only as villain but also as hero, confirming the hidden virtue in her fairy-tale `Beast' character." In its "validation of openness to the Other, or marginal, point of view," The Optimist`s Daughter can be linked to "Circe," a short story in which "Welty rewrites Homer's narratives from the sorceress's perspective."

As these passages suggest, Weston is careful not to make connections that seem untenable; in fact, she says in her conclusion that the gothic forms and figures are not unlike an " ignis fatuus . . . that flickers in many narrative corners and flames up in unexpected turns of plots." Weston's goal--one she fully realizes--is to provide the reader with "a gothic reading lamp." Along the way, Weston raises a question that she could not have anticipated: why isn't more academic criticism this useful, why isn't it more often this good?