The Disillusionment Of "The Southern Myth"

Eudora Welty grows up in the New South where modern consciousness pervades and is one of eminent American contemporary women writers. As a promising young writer of Southern Renaissance, Welty inherits the tradition of Southern literature, and develops the artistic style and writing technique of William Faulkner. Her works, especially the short stories, are considered as the treasure of Southern literature. Welty's writing is mainly about Southern family and she intends to expose the great negative influence the Southern culture deals modern Southerners, which enables her critique of Southern culture to have more realistic significance. As the peak of Welty's creation career, The Golden Apple is set in the South America from the early period to the middle twentieth century, and followed the wandering, love and personal pursuing as its masterstroke, present the southern society based on the classical culture.Tate asserted that the "center of the South was the family". The smallest, but perhaps most significant mythmaking unit is the family. Therefore, family romance has become the essential constituent of "Southern Myth". Closely related to the "plantation legend" of ante-bellum south, the family romance refers to "inter-and intra-family graphing or hierarchical structuring on the basis of myth as perpetuated by the Southern family." Closed geographical environment and backward economic life contribute to the idealized and conservative tendency inherent in the Southern mind, which rejects modern thoughts and civilization. In order to prevent the traditional Southern values from changing, the conservative Southerners try to idealize their homeland and construct the Southern myth.This thesis intends to reexamine Southern cultural tradition through tracing back the dissolution of Southern family romance. This thesis divides the disillusion of southern myth into three parts:the first part is the analysis of historical feature in southern society, including the patriarchy society, the conscious of community, the complex of Eden and xenophobia. The second part analyzes the creation and disintegration of "the family romance" based on the text. The last part researches on the smash of the figure of the traditional southern lady and the creation of new southern woman through the analysis of three symbolic specific women.Therefore the thesis gets the following conclusion:The Golden Apples not only presents the disillusion of the traditional "southern myth", but also reflects the representative figure of new generation of younger southerners such as Virgie or Ran, their self-awareness are awakening, and how they will face the reality positively, and change from the past negative spirit condition and accept the disillusion of "southern myth".