Female Ugliness: In the Southern Writings of Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor characterize women with ugliness by rebelling against the Southern ideology of beautiful women. In this essay, I will concentrate on those texts which recognize and embody the female ugliness – Welty’s Petrified Man and Lily Daw and the Three Ladies, and O’Connor’s Good Country People and A Good Man is Hard to Find. The ugly female characters demonstrated in these fictions challenge the stiff, gendered expectations of women by their appearance, sexuality, and strength particularly when women are in the public eye.
What is the difference in ugly and beauty? Ugly can be defined in the Oxford Dictionary as, “unpleasant or repulsive …show more content…
She is characterized with milky yellow hair, which isn’t a very favorable or beautiful color. Yellow is supposed to be bright and vibrant and by adding milky, it washes that color out making it lose its bold color. Welty also describes Lily as being beaten by her father as he almost cut off her head, leaving a wavy scar on her throat. This giving Lily’s character a shattered, scarred and ugly appearance. The three ladies go to great lengths in the story to try and send her away to prevent her from marrying. Southern society renders he unmarriable due to her weakness, appearance, and …show more content…
According to Miller in her book “Being Ugly,” “The female characters gain strength from gender difference. Her strength resides not in her beauty but in her ugliness. When ugly women face a man, he is not only forced to stop, but is petrified by the threat she represents.” This taking a dynamic turn and her failure to conform to societal expectations of appropriate appearance.
In the “Petrified Man,” the female characters show strength or rebellion against their husbands. No longer caring or compliant to standard Southern roles views these characters as ugly. Mrs. Fletcher states that if her husband “so much as raises his voice against me, he knows good and well I’ll have one of my sick headaches, and then I’m just not fit to live with.” In the nineteenth century women do as the husbands say, and in Welty’s text you can see the roles are
What is the difference in ugly and beauty? Ugly can be defined in the Oxford Dictionary as, “unpleasant or repulsive …show more content…
She is characterized with milky yellow hair, which isn’t a very favorable or beautiful color. Yellow is supposed to be bright and vibrant and by adding milky, it washes that color out making it lose its bold color. Welty also describes Lily as being beaten by her father as he almost cut off her head, leaving a wavy scar on her throat. This giving Lily’s character a shattered, scarred and ugly appearance. The three ladies go to great lengths in the story to try and send her away to prevent her from marrying. Southern society renders he unmarriable due to her weakness, appearance, and …show more content…
According to Miller in her book “Being Ugly,” “The female characters gain strength from gender difference. Her strength resides not in her beauty but in her ugliness. When ugly women face a man, he is not only forced to stop, but is petrified by the threat she represents.” This taking a dynamic turn and her failure to conform to societal expectations of appropriate appearance.
In the “Petrified Man,” the female characters show strength or rebellion against their husbands. No longer caring or compliant to standard Southern roles views these characters as ugly. Mrs. Fletcher states that if her husband “so much as raises his voice against me, he knows good and well I’ll have one of my sick headaches, and then I’m just not fit to live with.” In the nineteenth century women do as the husbands say, and in Welty’s text you can see the roles are