The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

First published: 1980

The Work

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty contains forty-one stories—the distinguished Southern writer’s complete short fiction—in which, by focusing brilliantly on the Mississippi milieu she knew from her life experiences, Welty creates symbolic situations that transform the ordinary into the mythical. Although Welty’s stories do not often focus on realistic social situations that emphasize the external life of women in Southern society, they are filled with strong and independent women who memorably assert their unique identity.

Typical is Ruby Fisher in “A Piece of News,” who is trapped in a marriage that allows her no sense of herself as an independent person. When she sees a story in a newspaper describing how a woman named Ruby Fisher was shot in the leg by her husband, her elaborate fantasy of her own death and burial is an ironic effort to find a sense of identity. When her husband tells her that the newspaper is from another state, she feels a puzzling sense of loss.

In “Clytie,” the main character is a stereotyped old maid, exploited by her family and laughed at by the townspeople for her eccentricity. Just as Ruby Fisher sees herself in the newspaper story, Clytie achieves a similar recognition when she looks into the mirrored surface of a rain barrel and can think of nothing else to do but thrust her head into the “kind, featureless depth” of the water and hold it there. It is not simply social isolation that plagues Welty’s women, but also a primal sense of separateness. It is not mere social validation that they hunger for but a genuine healing love that will give them a sense of order and meaning.

Other memorable women in Welty’s stories caught in a quest for their own identity include Leota and Mrs. Fletcher who, Medusa-like in a beauty parlor in “Petrified Man,” metaphorically turn men into stone; Phoenix Jackson, the indefatigable grandmother who in “A Worn Path” goes on a heroic journey to seek relief for her suffering grandson; and Livie, in the story that bears her name, who dares to leave the control and order of the paternalistic Solomon for the vitality of Cash McCord.

Welty’s stories focus on women defined less by their stereotypical social roles than they are by their archetypal being. As a result, they do not so much confront their social self as they reveal what Welty sees as their nature as isolated human beings.

Bibliography

Appel, Alfred. A Season of Dreams: The Fiction of Eudora Welty. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. A comprehensive and detailed early study of Welty’s stories.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Eudora Welty. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. This compilation contains several “must-read” classic essays on Welty: Katherine Anne Porter’s influential introduction to A Curtain of Green, Robert Penn Warren’s well-known essay “Love and Separateness in Eudora Welty,” and a key chapter from Ruth Vande Kieft’s important early book on Welty.

Desmond, John F., ed. A Still Moment: Essays on the Art of Eudora Welty. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1978. This small and relatively slight collection includes essays on Welty’s poetics of prose, her use of time, the relationship between history and myth in The Golden Apples, and her basic vision.

Devlin, Albert J., ed. Welty: A Life in Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987. Published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Welty’s first published story, this collection features an interview with Welty, a revisiting of Welty’s fiction by Ruth Vande Kieft, essays on Welty’s style and her modernity, and checklists of both primary and secondary Welty material from 1936 to 1986. It also contains a feminist reading of The Golden Apples by Patricia S. Yeager.

Dollarhide, Louis, and Ann J. Abadie, eds. Eudora Welty: A Form of Thanks. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1979. These presentations from the 1977 University of Mississippi symposium honoring Welty include an important discussion of Welty’s use of Southern speech by Cleanth Brooks, an essay by Peggy Prenshaw on the relative position of men and women in Welty’s works, and Noel Polk’s essay on love in The Bride of Innisfallen and Other Stories.

Manz-Kunz, Marie-Antoinette. Eudora Welty: Aspects of Reality in Her Short Fiction. Bern, Switzerland: Franck, 1971. The book argues that reality in Welty’s fiction is ephemeral and delicate, apprehended as a rhythm; in her tales she tries to capture a moment in the secret core of the self, a theme that the short story is best able to deal with.

Prenshaw, Peggy Whitmen, ed. Eudora Welty: Critical Essays. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1979. The largest and most varied of the several collections of essays devoted to Welty. In addition to articles on myth, language, and narration in Welty’s short stories, of particular interest are “The World of Eudora Welty’s Women,” by Elizabeth M. Kerr, and Margaret Jones Bolsterli’s essay on “women’s vision.”

Trouard, Dawn, ed. Eudora Welty: Eye of the Storyteller. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1989. This collection includes presentations made at the “Eye of the Storyteller” conference at the University of Akron in 1987. Of particular interest are four articles on women in Welty’s fiction.

Vande Kieft, Ruth M. Eudora Welty. 1962. Rev. ed. Boson: Twayne, 1987. One of the earliest, and still one of the best, full-length discussions of Welty’s fiction. Argues that Welty’s stories focus on the mysteries of the inner life.