Date of Award
5-1996
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. W. D. Taylor
Second Advisor
Dr. Lynn C. Dickerson
Abstract
Eudora Welty's novels of Southern women and ritual reveal her desire to convey a woman's world and to imbue it with a prelapsarian power of feminine self-knowledge. To create this world, Welty draws upon the mythological signifiers of Demeter, Persephone, and Hecate. Utilizing natural imagery of food and flowers, Welty develops a fecund, spring-like landscape and explores the relationship between character, author, and myth. What begins in Delta Wedding as a search to reaffirm the existence of a world spirit concludes in The Optimist's Daughter as a triumphant rebirth of the feminine spirit. Laurel McKelva Hand, unlike her predecessor Laura McRaven, is no longer confined by a patriarchal system of self-definition; she is able to move freely between the boundaries of time and place and assume control of her own destiny.
Recommended Citation
Grubb, Amy Davidson, ""Something for the girls" : Demeter, Persephone, and Hecate in Eudora Welty's Delta wedding and The Optimist's daughter" (1996). Master's Theses. 603.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/masters-theses/603