Although Miss Welty’s theme is the pervading and changing mystery of human relationships, her technique is adapted to the tone and the disclosures of each individual story. In her projection of the constant interplay between the inner world of feelings and dreams and fantasies and the external world of event and social reality, she has employed a variety of fictional points of view. In many instances she penetrates the minds and feelings of her characters intuitively. Young Nina in “Moon Lake” reflects that “it’s only interesting, only worthy, to try for the fiercest secrets. To slip into them all—to change. To change for a moment into Gertrude, into Mrs. Gruenwald, into Twosie—into a boy. To have been an orphan.” Just so, as narrator, Miss Welty changes into a host of characters, most of them possessed of a psychological depth and complexity that seem to be independent of rational intelligence. Sometimes the narrator turns herself over completely to the speaker, as in the monologue of “Why I Live at the P.O.”; sometimes her method is largely dramatic—a few scenes swiftly drawn, stage directions and dialogue—as in “Petrified Man,” “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies,” and “Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden.” In “Powerhouse” she assumes the implicitly collective point of view of the jazz musician’s fascinated audience, abandons herself to the fantasy observed and created, and sweeps us along through an approximation, in prose, of the form and moods of the music that is being played. Sometimes she begins her stories as observer, with straightforward exposition and close description; then, because we already know so much from the outside, we scarcely notice when she slips into the mind of a character, or as quietly slips out again, in a graceful and natural alternation of scene and summary, interior monologue and dialogue, fact and fantasy. The transitions are unobtrusive because the style, the figures of speech, and the rhythms are usually of a piece with the rich simplicity of the characters. Motive is frequently suggested by way of metaphor—abundant, deft, sparkling. Folk expressions appear frequently.

Style is one of the greatest sources of delight in these stories. Light and pure as air, searching, hovering, elusive, it has also a freshness and vigor that provide the substance, the matter-of-fact quality of the atmosphere we breathe. Miss Welty’s pleasure in variety and experimentation is apparent from the contrast between the artless clairvoyance of such early stories as “The Worn Path” and “Livvie” and the subtle impressionism of a much later story, “The Bride of the Innisfallen.” Whether her style is direct or oblique, simple or complex, always she delights us with a fresh performance, a new creation.