Why I Live at the P.O. | Occasional Travelers in China Grove: Welty’s "Why I Live at the P.O." Reconsidered
In the following essay, Axel Nissen discusses the effects of ‘‘perspectival principle’’ in Welty’s story.
In her introduction to the first edition of A Curtain of Green and Other Stories (1941), Katherine Anne Porter describes the heroine of ‘‘Why I Live at the P.O.’’ as ‘‘a terrifying case of dementia praecox,’’ effectively labeling her as a mental basket case. Though Ruth Vande Kieft has described Porter’s comment as ‘‘the Ur-blooper’’ of Welty criticism (‘‘Question’’), the idea has stuck and poor Sister has been on the psychiatrist’s couch ever since. In his monograph published in 1965, Alfred Appel, Jr. more or less accepts Porter’s diagnosis...
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