Of Women and Water
Submersion Stories in Eudora Welty’s Fiction

Sarah Gilbreath Ford (Author)

9781496863034

Hardback, published 29 April 2026

272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.546 kg

"Sarah Gilbreath Ford’s Of Women and Water uncovers a central pattern—with stunning precision and persuasion—of Welty rescripting the ‘Drowning Maiden’ across her career. Ford’s insightful slow reading, her gorgeous attention to Welty’s equally gorgeous detail, and her elegant reproduction and explication of Welty’s exquisite language make this book essential reading." - Harriet Pollack

Too often, when women in literary texts come of age, they die. Instead of entering an adulthood full of possibility, female characters time and again follow the path charted by Ophelia and drown, either literally in waters they cannot navigate or metaphorically in a society that does not allow them to construct their own stories.

Eudora Welty, however, rewrites this standard female coming-of-age story by repeating a specific key scene. More than a dozen times in her narratives, a young woman encounters a body of water—a lake, a river, a whirlpool, or even a rain barrel. In every case, the character’s submersion signals her entry into an adulthood full of possible danger. When the submersion experience becomes a spiritual baptism, however, the enchanted natural world can empower female characters to counter human social structures that tend to leave them silent, ignored, or dead.

In crafting these submersion scenes, Welty upends the power dynamics of perspective. Against the corporate point of view of a town, society, or family, Welty writes the individual, submerged perspectives of women trying to create adult identities not defined by societal scripts. By positing an ecofeminist reading of Welty’s fiction, Of Women and Water: Submersion Stories in Eudora Welty’s Fiction argues that Welty’s texts seek a narrative that will safely land female characters in adulthood with the agency to tell their own stories of confinement, submersion, and escape.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Dead Girls and Drowning Maidens
Chapter 1: Unscripting Genres in "Clytie," "The Wide Net," and "At the Landing"
Chapter 2: Submersion as Narrative Strategy in Delta Wedding
Chapter 3: Baptized in Nature in "Moon Lake"
Chapter 4: Swimming out of the Script: Virgie in The Golden Apples
Chapter 5: Welty’s Ophelia: Submersion and Escape in "The Burning"
Notes
Works Cited
Index