Eudora Welty Her Life And Her Works

of the women meet the man who is supposed to marry Lily. The woman who is

shocked that this gentleman exists, runs to the train to get Lily. The other

two women emerge from the train to meet the gentleman. In all of the commotion

one cannot be sure whether or not Lily has gotten off of the train. The story

ends in great uncertainty. The reader cannot be sure whether or not Lily

marries. “Miss Welty revels in working in terms of concious ambiguity, she

leaves the last word unsaid, the ultimate action unconsummated”(Kramer, 327).

Many of Welty’s works end in the same way, she leaves the final thought up to

the reader. The stories do not end in fact but allow the reader to use his or

her imagination.

In the story “The Wide Net,” once again Welty uses the theme love.

William Wallace loves his wife greatly but he decides to go drinking with the

boys and stay out one whole night. To get even with her insensitive husband,

Hazel Wallace writes a suicide note and hides. When William Wallace reads the

note he and his buddies set out to find Hazel’s body in the river. During his

expedition, William fantasizes of his wife and how much he really loves her.

“William Wallace looked down as though he thought of Hazel with the shining eyes,

sitting at home and looking straight before her, like a piece of pure gold, too

precious to touch” (Welty,176). After the long day of dragging the river

looking for his wife, William returns home to find his wife safe. The whole

experience teaches each of them a lesson about love.

“Through dream, as through art, man can express and realize his secret self:

through love, as through art, he can communicate that secret self to others: for

art she believes is the power to convey love”(Kramer, 329). The realistic

qualities of Welty’s work help it to be extremely believable. The feelings and

expressions she catches on paper are profound. Love which is the most difficult

emotion to define is clearly illustrated in Welty’s works. Her great

imagination and ability to look at ordinary human activity in a different light

sets Miss Welty apart from many other writers, “She participates in life around

her with such perception and fidelity that she catches it exact, and then she

colors it and carves it into an entity beyond the realism of daily life, which

is just what the people of her region have done with the often shallow and

monotonous basic material of their lives”(Kramer,329).

Welty’s poetic style and understanding of human life are obviously a

brilliant combination. She uses love, community and communication for the basis

of many of her stories. Another common technique she uses is to employ her home

state of Mississippi as the setting for her stories. By doing this, she can

write in diction that she knows; as well as being able to create both black and

white southern characters for her fiction. Welty’s characters are authentically

southern, their moods, gestures and entirely are sculpted to the finest detail.

Her characters are so true to life that they seem to speak for themselves.

“With their wide range in style, point of view, subject matter and

fictional modes, Miss Welty has thoroughly investigated the possibilities

inherit in the short story form, enriching and extending the potential of this

genre”(Kramer,329). Miss Welty currently lives in her Jackson home and

continues to write. She is an extremely private person and has chosen not to

release most of her personal papers or to authorizea biography. She feels that

her work should stand alone as the expression of her imagination.