Has Laurel throughout most of the novel kept the past in a silver frame, a set piece which does not threaten her? Does her night alone in her parentsвЂ™ house bring her a more complex vision of the past? Does she learn that the past is subject to our changing, evolving understanding of it?.Salus and LaurelвЂ™s friends? How does Laurel seem to be different from her old friends? Salus train station and still call themselves the bridesmaids. The bridesmaids from LaurelвЂ™s wedding greet her at the Mt.How important is this setting? How do Laurel and Fay respond to Mardi Gras and to the revelers costumed as Death and the Medusa? The novelвЂ™s opening section is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.What is the cause of the JudgeвЂ™s death? Is Laurel right to hold Fay responsible? If so, why does she take so long to speak to Fay about the death?.

Discuss the characterization of Fay, Judge McKelvaвЂ™s new wife? What values does she represent? Why might the Judge have married her? Do her differences from Becky point to a key reason? Why has she married the Judge? Is she merely a gold digger? How does Laurel respond to Fay? How do other characters in the novel respond to her? Why?.

To what extent does this autobiographical information inform The OptimistвЂ™s Daughter? To what extent has autobiography been altered to suit the needs of the novel?

In Part 2 of One WriterвЂ™s Beginnings, Welty describes summer trips to West Virginia and discusses her motherвЂ™s youthful years there.

The critic Jay Tolson calls Welty a вЂњnecessary optimist,вЂќ one who has a tough-minded view of experience, but who also has a вЂњcredible optimism.вЂќ Does this biographical information shed any light on the novel? What does the term вЂњoptimistвЂќ mean in the novel? Does the novel ultimately have an вЂњoptimisticвЂќ vision or is the term ironic? What is LaurelвЂ™s vision of experience as the novel ends?

Welty reports that her father was an вЂњoptimist,вЂќ but that her mother was the more daring individual of the two.

Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, at the age of 92. The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. In 1992 Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary short stories A Worn Path, Why I Live at the P.O., and Petrified Man, all of which have been included in many short story anthologies and literature text books through the years. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. Her first short story, Death of a Traveling Salesman, appeared in 1936.

Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs. This job sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. While at Columbia University, she also was the captain of the women's polo team.Дuring the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia University's business school. Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved.

Eudora Welty was an award-winning writer and photographer who wrote about the American South.

Eudora welty interview