The decay of beauty.
These two literary works both talk about women and femininity. Plath's poem is a depressive account of a mirror which sees nothing but the opposite wall, and every morning the face of a woman appears, searching for signs of aging. However, that woman was first a girl, and now she becomes an old woman. The decay of beauty is the main indicator of transience, which drowns the meaning of life.
In Welty's Petrified Man the decay of beauty is also not the central motif. The story is about the triviality of small people's lives in a small American town. Nothing really happens. Two women talk about trifles of their everyday lives. But the motif appears when Leota and Mrs. Fletcher talk about the latter's hair falling out.
