Welty's Children

In twentieth-century American literature, children are far more than mere characters; they are symbols reflecting a nation's anxieties, hopes, and evolving understandings of self and society.Children represent a range of ideas tied to themes of innocence, vulnerability, societal expectations, and the potential for both hope and disillusionment.Eudora Welty was attuned to the particularities of childhood, as well as to the complicated roles children play in the construction of race and politics in the US South.Whether in her stories, novels, or photographs, Welty paid close attention to the lives of children, creating through them complicated characters who reflect larger social issues.This special section includes three feature-length articles, two reflective notes, and an extended interview.Written by both emerging and senior scholars, these contributions reflect a range of perspectives and employ diverse methodologies to further our understanding of the role of children in Welty's stories, photographs, and life.As they demonstrate, Welty's children invite speculation, open spaces for new readings, and offer important insights into the lives of children in the segregated South of the early-to-mid twentieth century.In One Writer's Beginnings, Welty famously characterized her own childhood as "sheltered," protected by the love she so richly received from and returned to her parents and family, but she insisted that "[a] sheltered life can be a daring life as well.For all serious daring starts from within" (948).We see evidence of this inner daring everywhere in her representations of children, whether in the direct gaze of the children she photographed in Depression-era Mississippi or in the child characters who gaze upon the adult world of her stories and offer insights as penetrating as they are frank and sometimes hilarious.Children are great "intakers," as Suzanne Marrs describes them in Michael Pickard's interview that begins this cluster, a quality that Welty deeply admired and cultivated throughout her life.Indeed, Welty never lost what Pickard calls "the child's capacity for interest and wonder"; it infuses even the darkest moments of Welty's oeuvre with