Southern literature Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Peggy Whitman Prenshaw

Critical Essay by Peggy Whitman Prenshaw

SOURCE: Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman. “The Construction of Confluence: The Female South and Eudora Welty's Art.” In The Late Novels of Eudora Welty, edited by Jan Nordby Gretlund and Karl-Heinz Westarp, pp. 176-94. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Prenshaw examines the role of women, particularly mothers and daughters, in the fiction of Eudora Welty, noting that she depicts Southern women as a source of strength and spiritual healing in her works.

In the headnote that opens One Writer's Beginnings Eudora Welty describes her parents on a typical morning in her early childhood. Her father is shaving, preparing to leave the house for work, and her mother is frying bacon in the kitchen. Initiating what will shortly become a duet, her father begins to whistle a tune that Welty recognizes as “The Merry Widow,” and her mother, who tries to whistle, responds by humming her part....
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