From Compromise To Reconstruction—A Study Of Outsiders In Eudora Welty’s Fiction

Eudora Welty is always placed alongside William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCuller as an outstanding writer of the Southern School in American literature.In her writing, Welty shows deep concern for southern domestic life as well as conflicts in the southern community in a changing society. While increasing attention has been paid to women’s resistance against patriarchy, southerners’ suffering from the traditional culture and Welty’s concern for the changing society, the "outsiders" represented in Welty’s fiction have not been thoroughly studied so far. This paper attempts to analyze outsiders’ predicaments in the southern society and their attitude to southern culture and traditional social system in Welty’s fiction.It argues that although outsiders in Welty’s fictional world are reduced to victims of traditional southern culture, hierarchy and patriarchy, their attitude changes from compromise to reconstruction. On the basis of previous researches, the author of this paper finds that in Welty’s early two works, Delta Wedding and The Golden Apples, which were published in the 1940s, outsiders compromise with the old South:they either aspire to be accepted and assimilated by the southern plantation family, surrender to the patriarchy or submit to the traditional southern culture. However,in her late novel The Optimist’s Daughter which was published in 1972, outsiders resolve to reconstruct their cultural and social identities. They transcend traditional culture by denying or embellishing their past. Their reconstruction has a positive impact on southern community and serves as a catalyst for the awakening of southerners who are trapped in the idealized past.This paper maintains that Welty holds ambivalent attitudes towards the outsiders: on the one hand, she criticizes the outsiders’ denial of the traditional culture as she depicts those outsiders as cultural terrorists; on the other hand, she attempts to justify their positive influence on the traditional southern culture. It then proceeds to probe into the causes for such ambivalence. As an upper-class white writer, Welty is somewhat nostalgic for the old South in her literary career. Although she knows the weaknesses of the old South, she cherishes the unity and love in the big plantation family and in the southern community. Yet, since the 1960s, the South has undergone dramatic changes. With capitalization, industrialization and urbanization sweeping the South, a new cultural trend appears. Welty has noticed this new cultural trend and shows in her fiction her concerns for the proper way to treat the traditional culture.Re-interpreting Welty’s fiction from the perspective of the "outsiders" is of great significance since it helps to revaluate the old southern culture and social system in the southern plantation family or in the Deep South community. Besides, the weaknesses of the old culture and social system are more clearly exposed. What is more important is that outsiders who reconstruct their own cultural and social identities impel the conservative southerners to reexamine their legacy so as to have a proper way to treat their own traditional culture. In this way, the "outsiders" act as a great force in the revaluation and reconstruction of southern culture and society.