Research Paper on:
Fiction of Eudora Welty

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
She has been referred to by more than a number of critics as the feminine equivalent of William Faulkner, because most of her stories are set in the Southern heartland  of Mississippi, but that minimizes her own unique and highly individual impact. Eudora Welty walked a solitary path, always with a great sense of history, her head held high,  and with her acerbic sense of humor intact. Her short stories and novels were a reflection of the author herself - complex and each containing characters who embody her  unshakable affirmation of life. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar observed that Weltys work "has been consistently marked by a celebratory warmth - a sympathy for the deformed, the  distorted, and even the demonic in human life, along with a loving insight into the trials and triumphs of daily living" (1718). One of Weltys most life-affirming stories was also  one of her earliest, "A Well-Worn Path," which was first published in 1941, which features the journey of nearly 100-year-old Phoenix Jackson from rural Natchez into the city. It  is no coincidence that the protagonist is named for the Egyptian bird who sets itself ablaze, and then through the ashes, begins a new life, and emphasizes how people, when  tested by circumstances can overcome adversity along their path toward self-respect. When Phoenix becomes ensnared in a thorny bush, she mutters to herself, "I in the thorny bush... Thorns,  you doing your appointed work. Never want to let folks pass, no sir" (Welty 829). Her seemingly innocuous journey symbolizes how all Americans of 1941, regardless of race,  were fighting in one way or another for their own survival while endeavoring to maintain their identities in an ever-changing world. Of Phoenixs struggles, Welty wrote, "She left that