Laurel does not seem to be interested in the sequence of actions but rather in the thematic connections among these actions. It becomes central to the whole narrative. It enables the protagonist to recover the matriarchal relationship and it leads to the emergence of the feminine point of view. Welty’s recourse to memory serves other purposes. Laurel’s unrepressed memory has the power to move beyond the linearity of time and, in upshot, questions the past and reassesses the present and reflects on the future. Her unique handling of memory is clear subversion of the masculine narrative. She is trying to make sense out of the past, to understand her parent’s dying vow, to comprehend why her father took for a second wife a crass, low bred woman younger than his daughter, and to interpret her own brief marriage which ended suddenly by war and death. The novel is about the struggle of a widow in her middle forties. In The Optimist’s Daughter, Welty has successfully encoded a feminine experience through using certain symbols and images that have to do with women’s empirical realm. The stylistic patterns include Welty’s feminine appropriation of patriarchal myths and legends, her feminine perception of time, her appropriation of the weaving metaphor, and her idiosyncratic use of symbols and images.Welty’s unique use of symbols and images is a major feature of her feminine discourse. Welty’s discourse is stylistically patterned to convey the specificity of women’s experience. She endorses a feminine consciousness that constantly disrupts and challenges the stereotypes and the inherited assumptions of the masculine narrative. she commits herself to the standards and the norms of feminine fiction. Welty creates a narrative discourse which is in opposition to the conventional male discourse.
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In her works, Welty responds to Woolf’s fiction because she is an admirer of Woolf. Welty is not merely satisfied with raising awareness about feminine concerns like Austen she has created formidable female heroines who are defiant to the masculine society. Welty has derived the themes of womanhood such as marriage, love, courtship and the struggle of women to gain their freedom from Austen. She is a follower of women writers such as Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Anne Porter, and others. Eudora Welty resists any critical attempt to tie her or her works to any feminist agenda but her works are beset with feminist issues.
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Feminine Consciousness in Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s DaughterK.Sankari, Research Scholar, AVVM Sri Pushpam College (Autonomous), PoondiDr.R.Shanthi, Associate Professor in English, AVVM Sri Pushpam College (Auto.), Poondi.