Serious Daring from Within: Female Narrative Strategies in Eudora Welty’s Novels

Most critics of Southern novelist Euroda Welty have analyzed her work with a primary focus on her Southern background. This work instead uses a gender-specific approach to analyzing Welty’s novels, illustrating how Welty’s narrative techniques establish female authority and frequently undermine patriarchal values. In Serious Daring From Within , Gygax examines Delta Wedding , The Golden Apples , Losing Battles and The Optimist’s Daughter , and argues that Eudora Welty indirectly and subtly created a radical vision of a female world. The study applies feminist literary theory when considering the various narrative structures of each novel. Scholars of literary criticism, Southern literary studies and/or women’s studies should find this work of interest.