SOURCE: Holladay, Hilary. “Creative Prejudice in Ann Petry's ‘Miss Muriel.’” Studies in Short Fiction 31, no. 4 (fall 1994): 667-75.

In the following essay, Holladay explores the depiction of racial, socioeconomic, and sexual prejudice in a small community in Ann Petry's “Miss Muriel.”

In Miss Muriel and Other Stories (1971), Ann Petry reveals her continuing fascination with the way people are shaped by the company they keep. Although these stories were originally published over a long period of time (from the 1940s to 1971) they cohere geographically and thematically.¹ All of the works take place in New York or New England, and, while taking up a multiplicity of perspectives, they share a preoccupation with race, gender, and class, among other characteristics that often incite prejudice. But Petry's stories, like her novels (The Street, 1946; Country Place, 1947; and The Narrows, 1953), refuse to settle for easy truths. They do not moralize, and they do not avoid...