| Recent studies highlight the critical movement to consider Eudora Welty's work as political in nature. This dissertation represents an effort to add to that trend by asserting that Welty, while adhering to the principles that she sets forth in her essay “Must the Novelist Crusade?” always writes in reaction to and as a reflection of her time and place—twentieth-century Mississippi. As early as Delta Wedding she portrays communities which offer security and acceptance to chosen insiders but danger to those who refuse to conform—much like the social structure which James Silver describes in his 1964 Mississippi: The Closed Society. Within these communities, Welty places an identifiable group of characters, explained in Chapter One. The group, who are labeled as Welty's Fighters, includes George Fairchild, Ran and Eugene MacLain, Virgie Rainey, Easter, Catherine Morrison, Miss Eckhart, Clytie, and Fay Chisom. This passionate group share certain traits, such as a concept of time as cyclical, an understanding of ambiguity in themselves and others, and a willingness to challenge the system; they express their dissatisfaction through gestures of violence.; Chapter Two, as a tool for examining Welty's work, provides a history of Mississippi, tracing the formation of Mississippi's closed society and its violence. Chapter Three looks at four Fighters whose gestures of self-expression are sexual. Chapter Four examines three passionate female Fighters, who cannot or will not conform to community standards; their gestures are self-destructive. Chapter Five looks at Welty's African American Fighters—Phoenix Jackson, Powerhouse, and Roland Summers. Chapter Six deals with Fay, Laurel, and Becky in The Optimist's Daughter and argues that Fay is Welty's Fighter and that the novel represents a formula for dismantling Mississippi's closed society.; The structure of Welty's fictional communities, the creation of her struggling Fighters, and her insistence on the truth challenge the stolid, stagnant system of the closed society. Thus Welty's work represents her own subtle effort to confront and expose the complexities of her native state. |
