Eudora Welty Research Paper

In a series of passages from Eudora Welty’s autobiography One Writer’s Beginnings (1983), Welty describes her early reading experiences that later influenced her writing. She conveys intensity and value in these beginnings through the use of connotative diction, narrative anecdotes, hyperbole, and compare and contrast strategies. Welty writes in a passionate tone to a general audience. She relates the impactfulness of childhood reading experiences in order to express their place in her life as a writer.

Eudora Welty has been careful to show us that the narrator is not the only self-centered, melodramatic member of this family, so is Stella-Rondo. Stella- Rondo has gained everyone?s

Eudora Welty’s sheltered, adolescent life, coupled with her parent’s emphasis on education and reading, helped to shape her as the writer she was by making her stylistic approaches daring and intelligent while keeping a southern tone and state of mind.

Welty’s use of casual diction translates her childhood memories well. In the text, Mrs. Calloway and gave her permission to let young Welty read anything she desired, with the exception of Elsie Dinsmore. This autobiography is relatively easy to understand with few sophisticated words and phrases. For example, when Welty’s mother explains that she believes that the story is “too impressionable” for her, she says, “ ‘Impressionable’ was a new word. I never hear it yet without the image that comes with falling straight off the piano

Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1909. She went to Davis Elementary school and Jackson Central high school in 1925. Went to college and received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin. Eudora wrote different types of fiction stories fair tales, folklore, and stories of Mississippi life. Eudora wrote a Worn Path in February 1941.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. New York, NY, Norton & Company, 1985.

Literature changes as current events change and as the structure of society begins to shift. American feminist literature started to become prevalent during the Victorian era, or around the latter part of the 19th century. This is the time when the first wave of feminism in the United States hit. The Seneca Falls Convention - the first women’s rights convention - and the emergence of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s American Equal Rights Association in the middle of the 19th century are among some of the noteable events that sparked this movement in literature. Women across America were inspired by the changing of the times, and that is reflected in many American female authors’ writings.

It is impossible to discuss the role of women in literature without mentioning the influence of feminism. The later in the timeline one reads, the more prominent it becomes. Each new wave of feminism brings with it its own goals, yet it also continues to strive for some of the same goals as past generations because not everything is accomplished all at once. Although “The Well of Loneliness” by Radclyffe Hall and “Rubyfruit Jungle” by Rita Mae Brown, are two starkly different texts that strongly reflect the feminist eras in which they were written, they have some similarities as well.

Eudora Welty was born April 13, 1909, in Jackson, Mississippi she was an American author of both short stories and novels including one short story that will be discussed in this paper “A Worn Path”. “A Worn Path” was written in the south around the early 1940s 1941 during the time when African Americans were still being treated as if they were not as important as any other white person of the same age, gender in the south. A Worn Path” may seem like just a story about a loving old grandmother trying to take care of her grandson by taking a long journey to receive his medicine but the surface it is truly about not matter what was done in the past to reach equality we have reached not progress so the future and the past are the identical but

Throughout the history of American Literature there has been a common theme of male oppression. Especially towards the end of the 19th century, before the first wave of feminism, women were faced with an unshakeable social prison. Husband, home and children were the only life they knew, many encouraged not to work. That being said, many female writers at the time, including Emily Dickinson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, were determined to examine the mind behind the American woman, through the lens of mental illness and personal experience.

Author and writer, Eudora Welty once stated, “The only fear was that of books coming to an end” (Welty 53-54). In her autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, Welty writes about her childhood, which revolved around books and reading. Despite the fact that her childhood librarian, Mrs. Calloway, was infamous for intimidating every student that entered the library, Welty never feared. With the help of her mother, Welty unearths a genuine passion books, ultimately discovering her first step toward a lifelong career as a writer and an author. In Eudora Welty’s autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, she utilizes figurative language and loaded words to express vehemence her toward reading.

Butterworth, Nancy K. "The Critics." Eudora Welty: A Study of the Short Fiction. Ed. Gordon Weaver, et al. New York: Twayne, 1997: 225-234.

There are many female writers, some known better than other. Female writes most of the time focused their stories in experiences or personal point of view on what is going on around them. Other women write fiction of unusual worlds and character that people can relate to with the struggle or experiences. Margaret Atwood the “Canadian nationalist poetess is a prominebt figure concerned with the need for a new language to explore relations between subjects and society“ (Omid, Pyeaam 1). Atwood wrote her first novel called, “The Edible Woman”; this first novel categorized her as feminist, based on the main character of a strong woman. In an interview with Emma Brockes, Atwood affirms, "First of all, what is feminism? Second, which branch of

The American literary canon presents a one sided view of women, due to the dominance of male authors. Classic American books generally present images of women in a male-centered viewpoint, creating a biased representation of women in literature. In “Feminist Literary Criticism: From Anti-Patriarchy to Decadence,” Anne Barbeau Gardiner states that the American literary canon is “strikingly narrow…prepared by white men whose judgment was prejudiced and whose language was full of gendered meanings.” (Gardiner 395). Gardiner

Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.