Eudora Weltys The Ponder Heart: A Romance Parody :: Eudora Welty The Ponder Heart

Eudora Weltys The cerebrate Heart A butterfly Parody Jennifer Lynn Randisis book, A Tissue of Lies, explores several of Weltys works. Chapter III of this book takes a close look at the Southern Romance in Weltys novel, The Ponder Heart. In her essay Randisi writes that Weltys novel can be realisen as an teetotal allegory or romance caper (57).This idea of ironic myth or romance parody comes from Northrop Fryes definition ofmyth as an parody of ritual (e.g. plot) (57). Randisi continues to say thatthe events of the story comprise a quest, but wiz that recounts eventsleading to isolation rather than reconciliation, revealed through what thereader comes to know and what Edna Earle cannot see (that is, what she has edited from her perceptions). (57) The distance, or isolation, Edna Earle finds at the end of her quest, which is the cogent of her and her familys story, is the hallucination of her audience.This alienation is more thoroughly explained by examining diff erent elements of Southern Romance. These elementsare, regional myth surrounding the Southern character,geographic legend historical legend, family myth (here incorporating a soaking up with identity in relation to name), acceptance of the authority of the narrative voice, repetition of incident, belief in the ability of language to order chaos, andthe ultimate lack to create a romance. (58) Randisi makes a very well articulated parentage that the novel contains elements of a declining Southern Romance through this romance parody (57) theory. She brings to light elements of Edna Earle as a respectable Southerner (60), and elaborates on the family myth, which also plays its theatrical role in the respectable Southerner (60) motif. She successfully demonstrates how the appearance of being a tight and generous family is important to the Southern Romance tradition. She then goes on to test that for Ednas story to be believable, readers (listeners) first must accept Edna Ear le as a voice of authority and then readers must recognize that by retelling the story, Edna Earle recreates the noble-minded version of reality.Randisi helps Weltys readers read between the lines. She shows Edna Earle to be a person who go away manipulate her language in order to protect the family name. The narrative is, in fact, a composite family portrait taken over time, but peerless stylized, or edited, by its Edna Earle is, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson telling all the truth but telling it slant (77).