Eudora Welty 's The Optimist 's Daughter Essay

In this passage from her autobiography, “One Writer’s Beginnings”, Eudora Welty recalls early experiences of reading and books that had later impact on her craft as a writer of fiction. Welty’s language conveys the intensity and values of these experiences with the use of imagery, with the use of diction, and the use of details.

My first impression of Eudora is that she is a well-off person with a good background and a very good education. Through this she has had the abilities to gain good literary knowledge she had attended university but returned

They were running up the road to a barn and I followed them to a little grassy patch. They all went to a shady spot under a tree and laid down under the trees shade. I slowly walked up to them they looked hungry and lost so I went to find some hay, luckily there was a patch of hay nearby. So she went and pulled a patch out of the ground and went back to the horses. The horses were still there laying under the cool shade. I slowly came to the first one. It was small with a white dot around its eye and other white dots on its sides. I started to put the hay down the horse got up and started

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.

Ever since the days of World War I, women have been seen as second rate to men. They had to live up to many social standards that men didn’t have to and had strict guidelines on how to live their lives. This all changed when modernism deliberately tried to break away from Victorian Era standards in which women were subjugated to a lot more scrutiny. Ezra Pound, who was a large figure in the modernist movement, captured the spirit of the era in his famous line “Make it new!” Consequently, many writers started to experiment with many different and wild writing styles, which led to the short stories and poems we have today. The stories The Wife of His Youth and Mrs. Spring Fragrance were all written in this era of modernism. While they are written in a more traditional style of writing, both these stories have strong implications on feminism from the viewpoints of both male and female writers.

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.

Eudora Welty wrote during the modernism period. This literary movement is characterized by being known as a period of international movement during the European, American, and World art, literature, and culture. Some characteristics that are apart of the modernism period are narrations through fragmented, internalized, or multiple perspectives or viewpoints. During modern times classical and mythic reforms were remade. Modernism also increased industrialization and globalization around the world, during this time most modern fiction was cast by first person and the literature usually had a clear beginning, middle and end. Modernist stories were also known to point out Irony’s, satires, and comparisons between things.

Within every person lies a will and a flame of strength to achieve any goal, or conquer any obstacle in life. In Eudora Welty 's "A Worn Path", her main protagonist, Mrs. Phoenix Jackson, perfectly displays the strength that a human possess. Despite being of old age, poor and out of shape, Mrs. Jackson 's strength defies these odds on the worn path that she walks daily. Human strength is abundant in "A Worn Path", as the author shows the reader the reason why mankind is so strong. Welty demonstrates that love is what makes Mrs. Jackson, and everyone else, strong enough to move mountains. The strength of Mrs. Jackson exceeds more than normal, due to the condition of her beloved grandson, so much that not pain, death, or pride can kindle the fire of her strength.

Confronting the truth often reveals painful realities. In “One Writer’s Beginnings,” Eudora Welty details her very sheltered life. Afraid of any dangers that may affect her, Welty’s parents attempted to shield her from the world around her. Welty’s mother made the world around her seem more dangerous. As a byproduct of her sheltered youth, Welty reveals the truth in a palatable manner. She spends considerable effort making the truth non-painful. Every person copes with pain and loss differently. In many ways, Welty hides from the truth or at least protects herself from it by detaching herself from reality. Through context, clever word choice, and rhetorical devices, Welty compares and contrasts how she confronts pain

A lot of Eudora Welty's stories contain female protagonists, each character being different in their own way. A variety of women characters range from gossipers to lovers to the mentally ill. All of the women however, are special to the plot and they seem to fit into the stories precisely. In a critique, Charles E. May wrote that, “Welty’s stories focus on women defined less by their stereotypical social roles than they are by their archetypal being.” (May) May makes a great point on how Welty does not mainly focus on the stereotypes of women, but she thinks more about how to make the characters stand out for being themselves. Also, most

how it caused her to become a writer fiction. To express the intensity and value of said

American Literature has always been about men and for men. In this essay, we are going to analyze the women’s role in the book, as inferior and weaker gender.

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.

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.

An example of this notion is shown in Hope Leslie when Governor Winthrop, the landlord, reacts to Hope, the tenant, coming home late and refuses to reveal her reason why: “...Winthrop was not accustomed to have his inquisitorial rights resisted by those in his own household, and he was more struck than pleased by Hope’s moral courage” (184). Evidently, Winthrop’s reaction proves that women with “moral courage” are unladylike because moral courage is a manly trait. On the other hand, Esther Downing, another character in Hope Leslie, embodies the cult of true womanhood. Esther’s mere look at her love interest Everell is described as “a look of...pleased dependence, which is natural... and which men like to inspire, because --perhaps -- it seems to them an instinctive tribute to their natural superiority” (219). So, “Esther’s look … of dependence” confirms that the expectation that all women are supposed to have the same behavior, gestures and personality is meant to not only please men but to also hide their true form. Therefore, the cult of true womanhood presents an internal battle in female writers and Sedgwick presents this womanly struggle through the contrast between Hope and Esther. Society wants women to be quaint housewives but publishing a book defies the cult of true womanhood. Thus, defying the qualities rooted in the cult of true womanhood causes high risk of