Body As Metaphors In Eudora Welty's Works

Man's body always serves as both the subject and object by means of vision. The visual subject establishes certain kind of culture through man's experience, meanwhile man's existence is conditioned by such culture. Since the second half of the last century, the philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche. Michel Foucault. who were the pioneers of the Body Turn in philosophical realm, released mute body from its millenarian imprisonment, and let it cheer, leap, and dance to man's heart's content. This kind of existential rather than epistemological body awareness makes the writing, reading, and criticizing of texts deviate from the traditional way. Body awareness smashes the status of rationality, sets its metaphysical hegemony aside and explains the world from a new perspective by itself. Eudora Welty is not only a modernist or postmodernist writer, but also a photographer, and so she pays close attention to body narration through her visual acuity. In her most works, body consciousness harmoniously interweaves with the expression of Southern American culture. To some extent, by means of body narration, such kind of cultural expression changes the traditional Southern literary writings.Based on Welty's fictional works, this dissertation sets traditional Southern American culture as an access to the cultivation of body metaphors through body theories and cultural studies. In the research, there will be many specific analyses of Welty's four novels including The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart and The Optimist's Daughter, and seventeen short stories including The Key, Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden, The Hitch-Hikers, A Memory, Old Mr Marblehall, Flowers for Marjorie, Death of a Traveling Salesman, First Love, Livvie, Shower of Gold, June Recital, Sir Rabbit, Moon Lake, The Wanderers, No Place for You, My Love, The Burning, Where is the Voice Coming From? etc.Chapter one offers several reasons for the research of Eudora Welty's works. Based on the collected data, the research situation concerning Welty's works is comprehensively classified and analyzed. And then, the key words such as body, metaphor, Southern American culture etc. are particularly explained. Otherwise, certain methods or theories such as close reading, body theory and cultural studies have been respectively exhibited. Finally, both difficulties and innovations for this dissertation are explained, so as to make clear the academic valuation of the present study.In chapter two, the investigation of body metaphors is carried on from the perspective of mythology. In The Golden Apples, Welty identifies her protagonist King with Zeus, which helps King establish his idol image and certain kind of sacred authority admired by Southern Belle. The similarities between Zeus and King in terms of body marks implicate patriarchal culture of Southern American society. The critical value of this culture is embodied through body interactions between King and different individuals. Such interactions express the superiority of masculine culture. Its strength, freedom and masculinity stiffly govern women's world. However, Welty successfully deconstructs the myth of Southern chivalry and gentleman image by the description of old Marbelhall in the short story with the same title. Finally, in Moon Lake, Welty continues to deconstruct the patriarchal system by portraying the female world in Morgana and analyzing Easter's complex identity of Keen Esther and Jesus Christ. But unfortunately, women must compromise and adapt to patriarchal culture in the end. So,this chapter, through the exploration of body metaphors, shows both the establishment and deconstruction of patriarchal authority, the revolt and submission of masculine culture.Chapter three explores body metaphors relevant to Southern Belle culture. Welty leads us to the reflection of body metaphors through some innocent girls in A Memory and Delta Wedding. By means of initiation, those works exhibit the discipline and restriction of Southern Belle culture concerning manners and thoughts, which shapes traditional images of submissive women. In Golden Shower and Delta Wedding, Welty portrays Snowdie and Ellen as the perfect Southern Belles who are unselfish, stoic like angels. Finally, in June Recital, two rebellious female protagonists Virgie Rainey and Miss Eckhart bravely challenge traditional Southern Belle culture and make efforts to highlight their own life through natural expression of body. Although people in Morgana exile and marginalize them, their strong-willed spirits are greatly admired. It can be seen that Southern Belle culture is transmitted through different attitudes and representation of body behaviors, so there coexist both the promotion and revolt of such Southern tradition.Chapter four makes an assessment of body metaphors concerning racial culture. Firstly. Welty shows us the violent conflicts between the white and the black in various stories, such as Joel's terrible memories of his parents being murdered by Indians in First Love, the cruel murder of the Clements by Indians in The Robber Bridegroom, the physical violence between Troy and Root M'Hook in Delta Wedding, and the assassination of Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers in Where is the Voice Coming From?. Secondly, there is the story of Miss Eckhart's rape by a nigger in June Recital and her isolation by Morgana people. Also in Delta Wedding, Pinchy, a black maiden, got raped and pregnant by Troy (a white man), and is unfortunately treated as an invisible object on behalf of Fairchild's family honor. In Burning, such kind of honor worship reaches to its utmost. Miss Theo and Miss Myra let Phinny burned deliberately, just because he was given birth to by Delilah (also a black maiden) raped by her master Benton. All of those rape accidents cause different consequences which stem from traditional thoughts of family honor. Finally, in Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden, Welty portrays how the White make the Black docile through Fake Show in order to waken their self-consciousness and govern them easily. But with time passing by, the White catch their guilty and ask for the Black's forgiveness. In Delta Wedding. George Fairchild holds back the fight between two niggers and bandages their wounds, which embodies traditional Southern paternalism. Also in Delta Wedding, from Laural's perspective, she tells the fact that the Black can travel by the same train named the Yellow Dog with the White, which shows the tendency of racial amalgamation since the development of Civil Rights Movement. From all of those body accidents, we can make a conclusion that the gap between the White and the Black caused by skin diversity is getting smaller and smaller, and racial intimacy will take place of racial discrimination although racial conflicts still exist. Racial amalgamation should be the inevitable trend.In chapter five, the study of body metaphors is carried on in perspective of historical cultural context. First, it is stated that, even though the consciousness of class discrimination becomes more and more indistinct with the end of Civil War and the intrusion of industrialization, the marriage based on different habits, thoughts, cultures and classes is still confronting with severe problems, which are fully embodied in the marriage between Dabney and Troy, George and Robbie in Delta Wedding, Daniel and Bonnie Dee in The Ponder Heart. Secondly, in Death of a Traveling Salesman and Hitch-Hikers, Bowman and Harris, they are materialized, and get into communication dilemma, finally died of loneliness. In Welty's another work No Place for You, My Love, a man and a woman, they hold good feelings for each other, but find no chance to deepen such relationship. That shows the barrenness and infertility of people's affectional world under the industrial civilization. Thirdly, in Flowers for Marjorie, during Great Depression, the pregnant wife is thrust to death by unemployed Howard in his breakdown. In The Optimist's Daughter, selfish, cold, material-worshipping wife throws away kinship, ignores his badly-sick husband and immerges herself into body carnival. In Livvie, some industrial commodities waken up Livvie's sex consciousness and result in her betray of her old husband, finally leading to her adultery with their family manager Cash. All these body experiences obviously represent the fading of traditional Southern family values and the loss of previous harmony. That's to say, industrialism in the transitional period holds both good and bad sides.In short, based on Eudora Welty's works, this dissertation analyzes multi-leveled body metaphors in perspective of traditional Southern American culture. By means of close reading, body theories and cultural studies, it interprets the constant transformation of traditional Southern American Culture. From those meticulous investigations, we can draw a conclusion that during the process of inheriting and innovating the traditional culture, certain dichotomies such as construction and deconstruction, abidance and revolt, conflict and integration, harmony and disorder, etc. must be generated accordingly with that constantly-changing cultural situations. Such kind of opposition and unification comprehensively embodies the multiplicity and complexity of people's real existence in Southern America. Meanwhile, it expresses Welty's typical poetic pursuit. She adheres to Eliot's theory of impersonality and puts philosophy into literary creation, which makes her works not only objectively realistic but also profoundly metaphorical. So, she is entitled as one of the greatest Southern American writers after William Faulkner.