The study of the Private: Eudora Welty's Short Stories and Photography

Welty’s argument stating the only part of fiction that matters is its integrity is seen in all of her work. When she writes of integrity, she states that the integrity of a novel is its ability to stand the test of time. Welty believes that the writer’s job is to take life and show it as it really is. There is a “shared act of imagination between its writer and reader”(Welty 805). This shared act is what allows the writer to take a stand and say something important about life and people. Instead of looking at the generalities of a social cause, Welty looks at the individual involved in the cause, or an individual living in a certain time period. She explores how the social rules effect the people living in that time. She is not exploring the social rules and how they should be changed on a large scale, but only in how it effects certain people in the community. Through this personal exploration, Welty believes that her writing is more powerful than a novelist who takes on a cause head on. This chapter will explore that idea. How does Welty’s ability to explore an individual help her to not only connect to her reader, but also show the injustices of certain social problems.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Montana

Year

2009

Author dc:creator

• Painter, Mary Elizabeth

• character studies
• photography

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1090

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.umt.edu:etd-2109