SOURCE: "Orphans in Solitary Confinement: The Short Stories," in Innocence and Estrangement in the Fiction of Jean Stafford, Louisiana State University Press, 1987, pp. 129-42.

In the following essay, Ryan discusses Stafford's depiction of women and children in her short fiction.

As her novels and stories indicate, in technique as well as theme, Jean Stafford is interested in discovery, in the revelatory moment, in the burgeoning of awareness. Appropriately, of all her characters, her children most vividly and cogently present her world view. Handicapped by their youthful inefficacy and their limited knowledge and understanding, these young people are frequently put further at a disadvantage by less common circumstances: some are orphaned and unwanted; some (like Molly Fawcett) are precocious and misunderstood; and nearly all bear the double burden of being both young and female. As the titles of some of her stories about adult female protagonists indicate ("Children Are...