The Dignity of African Americans in the South
The term “negro” is relevant to Welty's fiction with intent and for a specific reason: in the South in which Eudora Welty was writing, to be referred to in that way rather than with that similar-sounding word that also begins with an “n” was pretty much about as dignified as it got. Welty was born just three decades after the end of Reconstruction and her career as a writer stretched from the height of the Jim Crow era through the Civil Rights movement and beyond. All the while, she remained purposely inactive in the politics of racism while quietly engaging in one of the most fiery literary insurrections against the system ever witnessed. Unlike even her contemporary and peer, William Faulkner, Welty lends her black characters a dignity sorely missing from not just Southern fiction, but most American fiction written by a white writer at the time. Phoenix Jackson is not just endowed with the mythic properties typically reserved solely for white characters, she is one of the most dignified black characters ever created by white writer. That the writer was born and raised among the pervasive racism of Dixie only makes the accomplishment all the more astonishing. Equally astonishing her mature and fervently atypical handling of racial matters in stories like “Powerhouse,” “Livvie” and even her shockingly prescient fictionalized assassin of Medgar Evers in "Where Is the Voice Coming From?"
The Outcast
While Welty’s humane handling of her black characters can astonish, it should not surprise. In Welty’s Mississippi, black men and women were always on the outside looking in and a recurring theme throughout her stories is a celebration of the humanity of the outcast. Quite often, Welty lends her outsiders physical manifestation of their psychological alienation such as the clubfooted black man who is manipulated by white men into becoming “Keela the Outcast Indian Maiden.” Two of her most famous stories feature outsiders incapable of speech (in “First Love” and “The Key”) while both “Clytie” and “The Burning” takes this concept to its logical extreme with characters whose very lack of sanity carries the burden of their alienation from normalcy.
Blurred Lines
A theme which Welty explores in some of her most highly regarded stories the blurring of the line between reality and that which is not reality. To reduce this theme to the blurring between reality and fantasy would too simplistic; that which is not reality takes forms not quite accurately described as a fantasy worlds. For instance, the blurring which occurs in the mind of Phoenix as she makes her way along “A Worn Path” is less a fantasy world than a penetration into a very active mind informed by almost Jungian symbolic psychology. On the other hand, the penetration into the metaphorical journey taking place inside the title character of “Death of a Traveling Salesman” while making his literal way to the only house around is the result of not just memories, but the effects of a recent bout with the flu and an even more recent automobile trauma. “A Memory” mingles an idealized viewer of the present with a memory to become something significantly more meaningful than mere fantasy, especially in the way it is forever tarnished by an intrusion into the present which stains the dreamy quality of the memory. Welty is working at a much higher level than mere blurring of fantasy and reality.
