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The Short Fiction of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flannery O'connor, Katherine Anne Porter, And

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The Short Fiction of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flannery O'connor, Katherine Anne Porter, And Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects Discarding Dreams and Legends: The horS t Fiction of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty Katy L. Leedy Marquette University Recommended Citation Leedy, Katy L., "Discarding Dreams and Legends: The horS t Fiction of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty" (2016). Dissertations (2009 -). Paper 620. http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/620 DISCARDING DREAMS AND LEGENDS: THE SHORT FICTION OF ELIZABETH MADOX ROBERTS, FLANNERY O’CONNOR, KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, AND EUDORA WELTY by Katy L. Leedy, B.A, M.A. A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin May 2016 ABSTRACT DISCARDING DREAMS AND LEGENDS: THE SHORT FICTION OF ELIZABETH MADOX ROBERTS, FLANNERY O’CONNOR, KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, AND EUDORA WELTY Katy L. Leedy, B.A, M.A. Marquette University, 2016 This project examines four Southern women writers—Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty—who use the genre of the short story and the setting of the farm or insular living space to critique Southern regional identity. I argue that the social critiques of these southern female short story writers have been overlooked because stereotypes rooted in the fantasy of the idealized southern woman has limited critical perceptions of these authors’ engagements with cultural or political issues, when in reality their short fiction helped to influence the shifting expectations of the mid-twentieth century South. This study provides a new perspective on the women’s voices who had been marginalized because of their region, gender and choice of genre. My research acknowledges the contributions of Roberts, O’Connor, Porter, and Welty to the changing norms of the second quarter of the twentieth century South and works to recover Roberts as important voice of southern change. Their work reveals some of the small moments of transition that helped create change in the South, particularly for its women. In the stories I examine, each author presents a flawed model of society and focuses on the factors that make it flawed. For Roberts, it is the false idolization of the past; for O’Connor, the limitations of the ideals of southern womanhood; for Porter, the social constraints of a provincial society; and for Welty, the available roles for blacks. Some of the stories indicate a path for improvement that allows for a more hopeful future. All of the stories can be read as parallel lessons for the South to discard its constricting Old South ideals. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Katy L. Leedy, B.A, M.A. I want to thank the many friends, colleagues, and mentors who have helped me complete this undertaking—far more people than I can mention by name here. First thanks goes to my inimitable director, Dr. Heather Hathaway, who could always see what I was trying to say. The support and direction of Dr. Amy Blair and Dr. Gerry Canavan have also been invaluable. Dr. Ed Block’s care and teachings have helped me become a better scholar and editor. I also want to thank Dr. Avis Hewitt, whose love of Flannery O’Connor inspired mine. Thanks to my family for supporting my seemingly endless existence as a student. Of course, good work cannot be accomplished without the support of friends: thanks in particular to Sareene, Amanda, and Jenna for their encouragement, reminders to stop procrastinating, and suggestions of wine to help recover from a particularly difficult section. Lastly, special thanks to Patrick, who helped me find the right words, and who always knows how to make me laugh. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 Old and New South .............................................................................................. 1 Women in the New South .................................................................................... 4 The Short Story in the New South ........................................................................ 8 CHAPTER ONE: ELIZABETH MADOX ROBERTS ................................................... 15 Record at Oak Hill ............................................................................................. 21 The Haunted Palace ........................................................................................... 34 On the Mountainside .......................................................................................... 42 CHAPTER TWO: FLANNERY O’CONNOR ............................................................... 50 Greenleaf ........................................................................................................... 56 The Life You Save May Be Your Own .............................................................. 65 The Displaced Person ......................................................................................... 70 CHAPTER THREE: KATHERINE ANNE PORTER .................................................... 83 Old Mortality ..................................................................................................... 86 Noon Wine....................................................................................................... 103 Pale Horse, Pale Rider...................................................................................... 115 CHAPTER FOUR: EUDORA WELTY ....................................................................... 128 Livvie .............................................................................................................. 136 The Burning ..................................................................................................... 150 The Curtain of Green ....................................................................................... 159 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 166 1 INTRODUCTION Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty are accepted as canonical authors, and thus their significance is not often interrogated. Patterns of interpreting these women’s writings have fallen into a trap of stereotypes that classifies them by their region, gender, and choice of form. The regional persistence of Old South ideas, particularly in regard to mythologized role of the white woman as the lady on a pedestal, has limited critical perceptions of these authors’ engagements with cultural or political issues. Moreover, critical perceptions of the short story as a lesser, “practice” literary form has also led to scholars overlooking the significance of these women’s short fiction. Elizabeth Madox Roberts has been neglected for less overt reasons. Although Roberts reached similar levels of critical and popular success during her lifetime as O’Connor, Porter, and Welty, her work today is almost entirely out of print and criticism is limited. I argue that the voices of these four southern female short story writers have been marginalized because stereotypes rooted in the fantasy of the idealized southern woman limit their perceived capacity to influence culture, when in reality their short fiction helped to influence the changing norms of the mid-twentieth century South. OLD AND NEW SOUTH All four women wrote in the American South between the 1930s and the 1950s, a tumultuous place with shifting regional identities due to the rise of racial liberalism, increased urbanization and industrialism, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. Even though the Great Migration had already begun, the Civil Rights movement 2 had yet to gain momentum, and conventional agrarian life no longer provided a unifying principle for the South. Although theoretically the nation was unified after the Civil War, Jennifer Greeson argues in Our South that the South is actually an “internal other for the nation, an intrinsic part that is nevertheless differentiated and held apart from the whole” (1). Her way of viewing the South demonstrates how it can be both a distinct region, identifiable in its geography, climate, literature, and more, but also part of the United States. Although the South faced enormous upheaval after the Civil War, Carl N. Degler posits “the persistence into the second half of the twentieth century of the social and psychological characteristics that first appeared in the antebellum years” (xii). J.A. Bryant also argues for the continuity of southern history: Up to and including the years of World War II, however, patterns of allegiance in the South were not greatly different from those that had prevailed since the end of the Civil War. The network of families, religious denominations, and political alliances were much the same. The cuisine had not changed. Pastimes remained the same. Dialectal variations persisted. the homogenization that was to transform southern life in the wake of TVA, with the advent of rural electrification, better roads, better schools, and chain stores, had only begun. For all practical purposes the Old South was recognizable as the Old South through the years of World War II. (4) Bryant’s list naturally extends to the endurance of the Old South’s social and gender expectations since each of the categories he mentions are deeply entwined with notions of gender and behavior.
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