The Robber Bridegroom Summary
Welty's principal theme in The Robber Bridegroom is the duality of experience, the gap between appearance and reality. This is a human concern that spans all times and places; it is a truth verified in history, legend, fairy tale, and myth alike. People and things are not always what they seem to be, and an innocent man like Welty's planter working his way through a dualistic world is bound to suffer. Furthermore, Welty attests through the relationship of her young lovers, the planter's daughter and the bandit-gentleman, that duplicity in human relationship leads to distrust and suffering.
One of Welty's favorite motifs throughout her fiction is the function of memory and the past, usually personal memory. Here, however, she uses history and the collective memory of western civilization — in the form of myth, tale, and legend — to tell her story. Thus, The Robber Bridegroom is different...
(read more from the Short Guide)
Study Pack
The The Robber Bridegroom Study Pack contains:
The Robber Bridegroom Short Guide
Eudora Welty Biographies (6)
5,277 words, approx. 18 pages
Eudora Welty (born 1909) is considered one of the most important authors of the twentieth century. Although the majority of her stories were set in the American South and reflected the region's langua...
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4,336 words, approx. 15 pages
With the publication of The Eye of the Story and The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, American fiction-writer Eudora Welty achieved the recognition she had long deserved. Her position was confirmed ...
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6,939 words, approx. 24 pages
Eudora Welty 's importance lies in the fact that during the past four decades she has produced an original and enduring body of fiction. Independent of any specific literary group, clear even of the i...
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9,153 words, approx. 31 pages
Eudora Welty 's achievement in the short-story genre is primarily in the area of form. Several other writers could be said to have introduced the subject matter of the South to the American short stor...
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9,451 words, approx. 32 pages
Although Eudora Welty has considered herself primarily a short-story writer, and although her earliest critical acclaim resulted from her brilliant experiments with form in that genre, it was not un...
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7,903 words, approx. 27 pages
Biography EssayEudora Welty's importance lies in the fact that during the past four decades she has produced an original and enduring body of fiction. Independent of any specific literary group, clear...
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