All of the characters are women, either workers or customers. The people in the story either work in the parlor or are getting a hair treatment. "The Petrified Man" is set in a beauty parlor in small town Mississippi in the early 1940s. Welty does the conversations beautifully without the slightest hint of condescension. I do not like it slows down my reading speed, it often seems patronizing to the characters and culture the story is about, and is it very hard to do well. I have said before that overall I am not a big fan of literary works that make use of "rural dialects" in conversations of characters. While in England she guest lectured at Oxford and that is where she met Bowen Welty won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for her novel The Optimist's Daughter. Welty had won a Guggenheim fellowship that allowed her to travel to Ireland and The UK. She even visited Elizabeth Bowen at her manor house in Ireland. Welty was mentored in her literary career by a fellow Mississippian, Katherine Anne Porter. Prior to this I read and enjoyed very much her famous story about family life in small town Mississippi in the early 1940s, "Why I Live at the P.O." Welty (1909 to 2001) traveled extensively but she lived all of her life in Jackson, Mississippi. "The Petrified Man" is the second short story by Eudora Welty that I have posted on this year.
The Reading Life Staff Offers a special welcome to all University of Mississippi Students-please feel free to leave any questions or comments you might have-you can truly be proud of Eudora Welty-a world class author! "The Petrified Man" by Eudora Welty (1941, 8 pages) "Elizabeth, I will for sure stop back on March 16įor Elizabeth Bowen Day during Irish Short Story