Lorinda Cohoon

Eudora Welty’s story “Clytie” depicts the breakdown of the Farr family, whose rigid codes of behavior prevent individual movements or connections outside the controlled relationships of the family. The Farrs no longer have the financial clout or social power they had once as an important wealthy family of their town. The family consists of James Farr, the bedridden, comatose father; Gerald, the son who supposedly runs a furniture store but spends most of his time in bed; Octavia, the reclusive daughter whose wits have left her, according to the townspeople; and Clytie, the daughter who cooks, relays messages, and on occasion runs wildly through the town. Clytie is the only Farr who has not entirely given up association with people outside the family. When she runs through town, she examines faces and looks for a face that she lost long ago. She eventually commits suicide by holding her face in a rain barrel after concluding that her desire to connect with others cannot coexist with the Farr family rules. Throughout the story, the Farrs trap themselves and control each other; their restrained movements hinder them from functioning productively outside of their house or peaceably inside the boundaries of the family. First published in the summer of 1941 in the Southern Review, the story has only a few revisions for the fall 1941 A Curtain of Green publication. In “Textual Variants of ‘Clytie,’” W. U. McDonald, Jr., notes three substantive changes. These three revisions emphasize the positions taken by the members of the Farr family and their direction and movement in relation to each other. The changes demonstrate Welty’s concern for the nuances of the controlled movement and position of the characters within the space of the story. The first substantive revision deletes a movement made by Octavia, the perpetually angry sister who never leaves the house. The Southern Review version reads: “‘Gerald is awake now, and so is Papa,’ said Octavia, in the same vindictive voice—a loud voice, for she was usually calling. After a moment she turned and walked back up the dark stairs” (54). In A Curtain of Green, Welty deletes the final sentence that has Octavia turn around and walk upstairs, and the paragraph concludes, “for she was usually calling”

In The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, facing financial difficulties that put her in the position of having to “earn her own food, or starve,” opens her house to sell gingerbread and other inexpensive baked goods to boys who are on their way to school (38).1 In this way, she ekes out a subsistence living and supplies a regular demand, shaped by schoolboy hunger and small amounts of pocket money. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes about the absurdity of economies that bring women and boys together, especially women who are associated with an “old gentility”: a miserably absurd idea, that she should go on perplexing her stiff and somber intellect with the question how to tempt little boys into her premises! Yet such is undoubtedly her object! Now, she places a gingerbread elephant against the window, but with so tremulous a touch that it tumbles upon the floor, with the dismemberment of three legs and its trunk; it has ceased to be an elephant, and has become a few b...

Abstract Initially published in serialized episodes in periodicals, canonical nineteenth-century texts such as Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn continue to influence current constructions of American boys as bad and "uncivilized." Although American boyhood has often been narrowly defined, cultural and textual evidence reveals many other shifting versions of American boyhoods. Examining the periodical production of canonical boyhood texts uncovers their connections to alternate boyhoods that intersect with and challenge the best-known versions of American boyhood. In both canonical and non-canonical texts, marks of serialization such as episodic gaps, letters from readers, and editorial prospectuses intervene in the construction of boyhoods and negotiate gendered citizenship possibilities. During the nineteenth century, serialized texts in middleand working-class magazines (Youth's Companion, Young American's Magazine of Self-Improvement, Our Young Folks, and Boys' Life ) explore national and regional boyhood citizenships; the portable form and dialogic nature of the periodical disperse these citizenships across the United States to readers who are not necessarily the white, prosperous boys for whom the texts seem to be constructed. In this study, I discuss the serialized production of middle-class property owning boys (Jacob Abbott's Rollo), which conflicts and coincides with the Young American's Magazine 's efforts to educate working-class boys about their citizenship privileges. By the 1850s, the working-class magazine's emphasis on the power of the labor unions extends to the world of small town boyhood as Oliver Optic invests tightly regulated boyhood clubs with citizenship-shaping capabilities. I explore the regionallygendered reconstruction of citizenship in Story of A Bad Boy 's (1869) serialization and the serialized packaging of Little Lord Fauntleroy 's androgynous conversational citizenship that influences its reputation as "American." I investigate how the uniformed, homosocial world of Boy's Life targets boys facing increasing moves toward co-gendered activities. During the twentieth century, serialization forms and reading accessories proliferate, blurring gender lines and promoting citizenship stratification. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, serialization has actively and "regularly" contributed to the construction of boyhoods that have shaped the available gendered citizenships in the United States.

Eudora Welty’s story “Clytie” depicts the breakdown of the Farr family, whose rigid codes of behavior prevent individual movements or connections outside the controlled relationships of the family. The Farrs no longer have the financial clout or social power they had once as an important wealthy family of their town. The family consists of James Farr, the bedridden, comatose father; Gerald, the son who supposedly runs a furniture store but spends most of his time in bed; Octavia, the reclusive daughter whose wits have left her, according to the townspeople; and Clytie, the daughter who cooks, relays messages, and on occasion runs wildly through the town. Clytie is the only Farr who has not entirely given up association with people outside the family. When she runs through town, she examines faces and looks for a face that she lost long ago. She eventually commits suicide by holding her face in a rain barrel after concluding that her desire to connect with others cannot coexist with the Farr family rules. Throughout the story, the Farrs trap themselves and control each other; their restrained movements hinder them from functioning productively outside of their house or peaceably inside the boundaries of the family. First published in the summer of 1941 in the Southern Review, the story has only a few revisions for the fall 1941 A Curtain of Green publication. In “Textual Variants of ‘Clytie,’” W. U. McDonald, Jr., notes three substantive changes. These three revisions emphasize the positions taken by the members of the Farr family and their direction and movement in relation to each other. The changes demonstrate Welty’s concern for the nuances of the controlled movement and position of the characters within the space of the story. The first substantive revision deletes a movement made by Octavia, the perpetually angry sister who never leaves the house. The Southern Review version reads: “‘Gerald is awake now, and so is Papa,’ said Octavia, in the same vindictive voice—a loud voice, for she was usually calling. After a moment she turned and walked back up the dark stairs” (54). In A Curtain of Green, Welty deletes the final sentence that has Octavia turn around and walk upstairs, and the paragraph concludes, “for she was usually calling”

... Mixed blood, and, I would argue, slavery's tendency to be conducive to the mixing, becomes the cause of ... Lorinda B. Cohoon is an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas, El ... Andie Tucher's Froth and Scum also provides an interesting assessment of the power of ...