In this study, Ruth D. Weston probes the whole of Eudora Welty's work to reveal the writer's close relationship to the gothic tradition. Specifically, Weston shows how Welty employs the theme of enclosure and escape and settings that convey a sense of mystery - gothic adaptations both - to create certain narrative techniques in her fiction.

In addition to examining the texts themselves, Weston draws on Welty's critical and theoretical writings and her letters and other materials in archival collections. She also gleans insights from the work of contemporary narrative theorists, feminist critics, and recent commentators on the Gothic. In the course of her presentation, she offers some excellent new assessments of Welty's relation to the "female Gothic" and the "Southern Gothic" and to William Faulkner and Jane Austen.

This book is one of the most informed studies to date of Welty's relation to the literary mainstream of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Welty scholars as well as general readers of American and southern literature will gain a deep appreciation for Welty's imaginative and original response to the Gothic literary tradition.