Ann Petry and the Politics and Craft of Interior Monologue
Location
Ponderosa Room A
Presentation Type
Presentation
Presentation Topic
Literature
Start Date
6-3-2026 2:30 PM
Event Sort Order
36
Abstract
Despite being one of the first widely published Black female authors and a masterful practitioner of interior monologue, Ann Petry has largely been forgotten in discussions of twentieth-century American literature. This essay recuperates Petry's technical achievement by examining how she uses interior monologue to construct fundamentally different structures of consciousness across characters in The Street and Miss Muriel and Other Stories. While critics have recognized Petry's diverse character portrayals, this analysis focuses on how she differentiates the architecture of thought itself. Through close readings of paired characters who share demographics but think in radically different ways, the essay demonstrates that Petry refuses to let race, gender, environment, or age predict how consciousness operates. Lutie Johnson and Mrs. Hedges (two Black women in the same building) develop opposite cognitive relationships to their surroundings; Johnson, Jones, and Old Peabody (three men under pressure) each fragment mentally in distinct ways; the narrator of "Miss Muriel" and Bub (two children) reveal that even childhood consciousness follows fundamentally different principles. By showing that minds work differently, not just in content but in structure, some splitting from bodies, others liquefying into chaos, still others maintaining analytical distance, Petry creates what Gladys J. Washington calls her "balanced world." This technical mastery of psychological diversity makes Petry's neglect in the literary canon particularly unjust.
Ann Petry and the Politics and Craft of Interior Monologue
Ponderosa Room A
Despite being one of the first widely published Black female authors and a masterful practitioner of interior monologue, Ann Petry has largely been forgotten in discussions of twentieth-century American literature. This essay recuperates Petry's technical achievement by examining how she uses interior monologue to construct fundamentally different structures of consciousness across characters in The Street and Miss Muriel and Other Stories. While critics have recognized Petry's diverse character portrayals, this analysis focuses on how she differentiates the architecture of thought itself. Through close readings of paired characters who share demographics but think in radically different ways, the essay demonstrates that Petry refuses to let race, gender, environment, or age predict how consciousness operates. Lutie Johnson and Mrs. Hedges (two Black women in the same building) develop opposite cognitive relationships to their surroundings; Johnson, Jones, and Old Peabody (three men under pressure) each fragment mentally in distinct ways; the narrator of "Miss Muriel" and Bub (two children) reveal that even childhood consciousness follows fundamentally different principles. By showing that minds work differently, not just in content but in structure, some splitting from bodies, others liquefying into chaos, still others maintaining analytical distance, Petry creates what Gladys J. Washington calls her "balanced world." This technical mastery of psychological diversity makes Petry's neglect in the literary canon particularly unjust.
Presenter Bio
Ella McDowall is a middle education major with a focus in language arts and a minor in social work at the University of Nebraska in Kearney. After graduation, they plan to work in education in a library setting and pursue a master's degree in library science, with the goal of eventually working in an academic library. They believe libraries are essential spaces for community building and intellectual discovery. In their free time, Ella can usually be found either embroidering or curled up with a good book.