Reading Eudora Welty’s “Petrified Man” and “Old Mr. Marblehall” as Southern Pulp

This chapter examines the work of Eudora Welty in relation to the conventions of pulp and genre fiction, specifically that of mystery and detective stories. When read through this lens, Welty’s short fiction reveals “clues,” often in the form of the pulp publications strewn throughout her stories, that direct the reader on interpreting her characters. In “Petrified Man,” the women act as detectives, perusing pulp magazines that ultimately point them towards catching the criminal, and in “Old Mr. Marblehall,” the titular character is a bigamist who reads lowbrow publications in horror and science fiction, magazines that signal the slaveholding South’s own troubled history of white men leading double lives. Both short stories pay tribute to the mystery genre, appropriating such elements as disappearing acts, doppelgängers, counterfeit identities, and the popularity of pulp genre fiction presenting suspect constructions of masculinity.