Yet, burning other possessions dear to Laurel's mother and father (Judge McKelva) is shown to be a necessary act of release and forgiveness for Welty's protagonist, as she learns that the past-her parents' possessions and best selves-cannot be defended or honored by using the methods she first tries, which involve blockage, denial, and a self-satisfied sense of her own superiority. Becky McKelva's impassioned recitation on her deathbed of Robert Southey's poem "The Cataract of Lodore" was her plea to be released from death's trial and imprisonment, and from what she took to be her family's willful misunderstanding of her crisis: "With her voice Becky was saying that the more she could call back of 'The Cataract of Lodore,' the better she could defend her case in some trial that seemed to be going on against her life" (OD 973). Hunt's painting and Tennyson's poem are useful lenses through which readers may see how Welty's portrait of Laurel Hand departs from influential nineteenth-century criticisms of women's creativity. In the process, such an approach demonstrates how Welty radically interprets the Perseus and Medusa story (which also involves mirrors) and, by extension, her different understanding of the meaning of mimesis in art and literature.