I lack the mythology background to say for sure, but it seems clear that Virgie Rainie, the central character in Eudora Welty's The Wanderers should be seen figured both by Medusa and Perseus.
She is Medusa in that the sexuality she exudes has caused/compelled the town to turn her into a bogey-man; in their minds, she is a frightening monster and the town folks (excepting some of the men) avoid like the plague. Beyond the sexuality she exudes, Welty never quite spells out the precise sin(s) for which Virgie is being punished. She simply alludes; Virgie is clearly a character with a past.
In the myth, Medusa is punished by a vengeful Athena for trysting with Poseidon. In The Wanderers, it is suggested that Virgie has had a liaison with the town's elusive, protean, mythic King McClain. King is ethereal as water. And, following the outline of the myth, the town (Athena is the patroness of Athens, which in term might be construed as a symbol for the idea of the city, or communal life), punishes Virgie.
The Medusa personae imposed on Virgie freezes. On the one hand, it turns to stone all who return it's gaze. However, the personae freezes Medusa, and Virgie. Her outlaw, outcast, bad-girl personae dominates her self, both in the town's mind and in her own. It ostracise her from the town and ostracised her from a more authentic self. It freezes her into a statue, a confining posture.
There is no Perseus who can come and rescue her. She must sever her own head, or sever the head of the confining, imprisoning Personae the town has imposed on her.
Yet, I think it is safe to say she doesn't view the beheading of her personae as a clear good; it is not a task she readily takes up. There is protection in the mask. While it freezes her into an inauthentic and at times painful stance, the personae protects by freezing people who might come closer, scares away those with ill intent. It keeps those away who might wound her more permanent manner, possibly annihilate her essence entirely.
There is a power in the pose, and while it is imposed, or may originally have been at some moment in the past, Virgie has/does grab it and make it her own at some level. Like Perseus, she uses the Medusa head, lifeless as it is, as a weapon to create space for herself.
Yet, I believe that part of Virgie dreams of slaying the Medusa personae that marks her. She dreams of slaying it and leaving it behind, just as her actions in the story are all bent toward escaping the town as soon as possible. Leaving the town behind, leaving her mother's house, is Virgie's opportunity to assume the heroic mantle of the world-changing Perseus and cut off her Medusa's head. Perseus is not Medusa. He is not a victim. He is not a long suffering, pitiable creature.
The Perseus/Medusa picture on Ms. Eckhardt's wall depicts the Medusa myth in a prophetic, heroic style. This explains some of it's likely appeal for Virgie. Heroic acts, prophecies fulfilled, are one-offs: they occur once in time and permenantly change the course of the world. Such acts stand outside of the repetition and cyclic nature of time, they mark clear breaks.
Virgie can't write herself into such an act. She is a person woven in time. Instead of writing as a mythic act, she writes into time. For her, it takes place in time, and repeats and repeats.
Every Perseus/Medusa moment is double; an act of hope and despair, love and hate. Likewise, it is internal; like Ms. Eckhardt, Virgie is endlessly Medusa and Perseus at once. One moment/personae may dominate for stretches. Yet, even dominant expressions of one moment/personae of the heroic act will never entirely erase the other moment/personae. To some greater or lesser extent, Virgie simply knows and expresses both positions at one and the same time. She is at all times both Perseus endless and Medusa endless. To occupy both position at one and the same time creates the passion and life that mark Virgie as the simultaneous striking of different chords creates harmony, music.
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