Allusion and hints of meaning - Eudora Welty's The Bride of the Inisfallen

"The Bride of the Inisfallen" is typical in some ways of Eurdora Welty's late "Collected Stories," beautifully written start to finish, rather long by today's standards anyway (stor from the early '50s), many characters, most of them introduced with a single broad brushstroke or a moniker (lady with an unusual hat, the young American girl reading her novel, the "man from Connamara") - actually I don't think any of the characters have given names (that's not typical of Welty). The plot is more direct and straightforward than in Welty's earlier stories but, as in No Place for You, My Love, this one involves a journey - from London by train and boat to Cork, Ireland. Story line easy to follow, but the significance is elusive, in that Welty in her late stories almost always works by allusion and by hints of meaning. In this case, we follow the railroad compartment full of people on the long journey, learning bits about each of them, but not until the last pages do we focus on one character, the American girl, and on her story - yet what is that story? We get only a hint. She is leaving behind a husband in England, and thinks of sending him a telegram with the words "England was a mistake" - but she tosses the message away and in the last gesture of the story enters a crowded pub full of "strangers." Most writers would build this whole story from the girl's (I would call her a woman, but Welty doesn't) point of view, but Welty builds her personality up by contrasts with the others - she's a silent vortex around which the story revolves. Is it enough? I'm not sure - it's a long journey to take to end with only a glimpse of a mood and a sliver of information. I've come to think that Welty's stories, more than those of almost any other writer, demand re-reading - she's very rich with detail but parsimonious with what is usually essential information in a story, she doesn't build it up for us but trusts us to pick up little bits of information and build the narrative, as we do with the life around us every day. It's a great story for mood and feeling - but its significance is hard to perceive on first reading, like a landscape viewed through a fog. Finally, worth noting that this, the title story in her final collection, is to date her first story set outside the U.S. and for that matter one of only two or 3 outside of the South.