Southern Women Storytellers

Cambridge CollegeLIT 311Instructor:Christina Brownell

What is the Geography of the South?

Many distinct and separate regions Mississippi Delta Georgia Woods Louisiana Bayous Florida Beaches Appalachian Mountains

People and Places of the South White Black Urban Rural Lower-class Middle-class Historical Modern

Southern Influences

Migrants Preachers Politicians Music Literature

The “Southern Woman Writer”

Distinctions: A subgenre of American fiction that is

associated mostly with women born around the beginning of the 20th century to mid 20th century

Strongly influenced by traditions of earlier writers (Hurston, Faulkner, Wright…)

Storytellers Southern writers are storytellers first and

foremost Their style is to encourage readers to read

between the lines – indirect storytelling Their stories are filled with Biblical

allusions, quotes, religion, dialect and folklore

Writers include details of everyday life, local nature, specific habits of people, specific places

Recurrent Themes Alcohol Violence (often at gunpoint) Weight of the past Music – blues, jazz, gospel, bluegrass Self-righteous defense of slavery Black-White relationships Sexuality Human oddities (misfits) Humor

Prominent names 1920s – 1930s

William Faulkner Erskine Caldwell Robert Penn Warren Katherine Anne

Porter Zora Neale Hurston Richard Wright

1930s – 1950s Flannery O’Connor Eudora Welty Lillian Hellman Tennessee Williams Truman Capote

1960s – 1980s Alice Walker Mary Hood Dorothy Allison

What traits characterize Southern Women writers?

Southern women tell their tales… Lower-class women, not qualified as

“ladies” had the freedom to speak out Strong, capable, enduring survivors Stubborn and rebellious Although sheltered, they managed a rich

inner life

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) Well-loved writer Wrote about rural

Mississippi Worked for Federal

Works Project as photographer

Close observer of her surroundings

Characters: comic, eccentric, charming, and grotesque

Careful use of dialect and speech intonations

“A Genius of Human Relationships”

Eudora Welty took many photos during the Depression, when she worked as a publicity agent for the WPA. From 1933-36 she traveled across rural Mississippi taking photographs and documenting rural lives.

Eudora Welty Photographs

“Home By Dark” Yalobusha County 1936 (Courtesy Eudora Welty LLC and Mississippi Department of Archives and History)

•What does this photograph tell us about how EudoraWelty views the south?

Welty’s view of humankind

Side Show, State Fair , 1939

“Home with Bottle-trees” This photograph by

Welty, of a home in Simpson County, reflects a folk belief that "bottle-trees" — trees on whose limbs bottles have been placed — will trap evil spirits that might try to get in the house.

© Eudora Welty CollectionMississippi Department of Archives and History

Reading the Images…

•What does this image tell us about life in Mississippi?•What kind of life do these people lead?

"[My snapshots] were taken spontaneously – to catch something as I came upon it, something that spoke of life going on around me.A snapshot's now or never."

Sunday School, Holiness Church, Jackson, 1935

Connecting the Image to Text

In a 1989 interview, Welty was asked what an “outsider” might think when viewing her photos.

“They might or might not know that poverty in Mississippi, white and black, really didn’t have too much to do with the Depression. It was ongoing. I took pictures of our poverty because that was reality, and I was recording it. The photographs speak for themselves. The same is true for my stories.”