A Jilted Granny
A critical Analysis
of Katherine Anne Porter's The Jilting of Granny Weatherall:
Its Writing Techniques
English Department of
Nanchong Vocatianal and technical
college Wan
南充职业技术学院外语系 王莉
Abstract: Katherine Anne
Porter successfully creates a typical image of Americanwoman,
Granny Weatherall, in the early 20th century with
crafty exploitation of several writing techniques. Porter confides the cruelty
of the society to womenthrough Granny's bitter life:
jilted at the altar by her fiancé, her husband died
only several years after they got married, hard time of managing the farm, the
heavy load of raising the young children. Life is full
of hardships and seemsto her without her own
personality. And Porter discloses the common destiny of women in the
man-centered society.
Key words: the stream-of-consciousness
the limited omniscien point of view Charactonym theme
Successfully
though Tolsti created Anna Katherina,
the heroine of his famous work Anna Katherina——accurately
he analyzed her characteristics and meticulously he penetrated into her inner
world, especially in her feelings. However, such kind of work was rare in the
past. In the man-centered society—especially men writers were in the majority,
how to create images of woman was based on the u
nderstanding of men writers. Therefore,
women's inner world that men writers wrote could not be understood completely,
simply from the men's eyes and their earsor their
knowledge from the library. What's more, for some women, their inner world
could be so complex that it could not be expressed even by themselves,
how did the men do? Thus this resulted in the fact that sometimes the women's
pleasure, sobriety, happiness and anger was difficult to receive the apt and
vivid expressions.
With the advance
of technology and the development of society in the early 18th century, more
and more women began to participate in the occupation—writer,after
they were released from heavy chore work. It seemed that they had advantages
over men writers in creating a successful image of women, such as Elizabeth Bennet by Jane Austen and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, not that
they portrayed themselves, described the world in their own eyes, selected
writing materials according to what the women thought and saw, but that they
observed the conflicts between all kinds of persons in society. What they expressed
was women's views and what they described was the women's inner world, which
was unfamiliar to men writ
ers. Katherine Anne Porter is
such a kind
of woman writer in American literature in the earlier 20th century.
It is known that
there is a truth that readers cannot merely find the writer's views and ideas
in his works, but also some fragments of his life experience. Porter is no
exception. Her ninetyyear experience (1890—1980) enriches her works,especially the childhood in the south. All her experience
was attributed to thesettings of her novels and short
stories.Despite Porter's relatively small output—only one novel and 27 short
stories, she has been widely praised by both critics and fellow writers for the
power, subtlety, precision of her works, and the skill in creating images of
women through a variety of writing techniques, besides the skill in describing
the stoic psychological state of women from various angles. Working with a
narrow range and limited subject, mostly from her experience of her childhood
in south and southwest and the period when she lived in
representative of American women in the
early 20th century can be seen in her short story 〖ZZ(Z〗The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.
Katherine Anne
Porter's short story, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall'
was first published in Transition magazine in February, 1929. It is the story
of the last day in the eighty-year-old woman's life. In her final hours with
her survivingchildren around her bed, Granny Weatherall Granny reviews her life by remembering the
important events, frustrations, achievements, and feelings. She reconsiders her
life and ponders her impending death. It is a well-crafted story for Porter's
elaborate explorations of many writing techniques. Thus she leaves the readers
a vivid and an unforgettable image.
Stream-of-consciousness
Once Porter
recounted her early education she received in convent school as "a fragmentary
but strangely useless education", and as having been taught no at "schools
at all, but by five writers: Henry James, James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot,
Ezra Pound". In this story, she shows the
influence by them—skillful exploration of the stream-of-consciousness, which
James Joyce exploits in his masterpiece Ulysses. Porter opens the story with
Doctor Harry visiting the eighty-year old Granny during her final day of life.
"She flicked her wrist
neatly out of Doctor Harry's pudgy careful fingers and pulled the sheet up to
her chin." He is feeling her forehead and she becomes feisty with him:
"get along and doctor your sick," "Leave a well woman alone.
I'll call you when I want you." Next she moves to the stream-of-consciousness
narration, which renders the thoughts, memories, and associations of Granny's
mind. She applies the rhetorical technique to guide her audience through the
last sixty years of a leathery, bitter woman jilted in life, and finally in
death. This technique is especially well-suited to the story.
By using the s'tream-of-consciousness technique, Porter is easy to work
out the problem between a limited story space and an eighty-year long life of
the main character. It helps Porter to illuminate the meaning by moving back
and forth from the past to the present. Since Granny is dying, the setting is
limited in the bedroom, most of the action occurs in Granny's head and the
thoughts of Granny Weatherall is in a semi-conscious
state. Her mind flows like a river, gently drifting over the bitter memories of
her whole life. The seemingly aimless and casual technique, similar to a
human's thought pattern, effectively develops the exposition, conflict, and
denouement.
By using the
stream of consciousness technique, Porter uses her literary resources to give a
sense of immediacy to Granny's thoughts, feelings, memories, and judgments. And
she also makes good use of this technique to catch the scope and the track of
the mental movable process of Granny. In this process, her cognition,consciousness,half consciousness, recall, expect,
association of thoughts of affection and pettiness all blend together. It is
easy to deeply and vividly penetrate into the interior of Granny Weatherall. It reveals Granny's alternating confused and
clear thoughts during her final moments as she moves from lucid consciousness
to confused semi-consciousness.
By using the
stream of consciousness technique, Porter lays Granny Weatherall's
background out. The occasional glimpse into the main character's past reveals
the demanding responsibilities of a young widow. She reflects on how digging
post holes, riding country roads in the winter, and sitting up nights with sick
horses, Negroes and children,Her bitter experience
has changed her.
From this, Porter unfolds the
readers a panoramic view of her bitter life: she was abandoned at the altar on
the wedding day. Her husband died when she was young. Thus, this technique
challenges the reader to draw a conclusion of the characteristics of Granny Weatherall.
The stream of consciousness technique is well suited to the meaning.
Psychological time is more important to Granny than chronological time. For
example, Granny's sense of time is much different from her daughter Cornelia
(who takes care of her)The following passages illustrate this:“Tomorrow was far away.”“No footsteps
but a sudden hand on her cheek ¨¨¨”now all the children were older then their
father.
By using the
stream of consciousness technique, Porter reveals the psychological process of
a dying woman. What flashes back and forth bitter experience in her mind or the
illusions she sees in the last period are the things that she really thinks and
concerns. Those things may be forgot or hidden in her deeper heart. For
example, Granny remembers her first jilting, sixty years ago when George abandoned
her at the altar. She has never been able to forgive him because of the pain
and humiliation that he caused her. Granny says, "What does a woman do
when she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for a man and he
doesn't come." She will not show it up freely facing other people or the
hard time of the life. That is to say, this technique effectively portrays the
psychological nature of Granny and her relationships with George, John, Hapsy, Cornelia,and
her other children. And at the same time it tells the reader what is really
important in a woman's whole life indirectly: love and family. It deepens the
theme of this story.
The limited omniscient point of view
Like Sherwood
Anderson, Porter believed that the short story did not require a “plot”. She
said,“needed first a theme, and then a point of view, a certain knowledge of
human nature and strong feeling about it, and style—that is to say, his own
special way of telling a thing that makes it precisely; his
own and no one else's." Hence, though the story has a plot, it is very
simple, only chronicles the last day in the life of an eightyyear old heroine,
Ellen Weatherall. Her success in creating the vivid
image of this woman lies not merely in using stream of consciousness to
organize the story but also using the limited omniscient point of view to
increase the reliability of the story.
Point of view has
a very outspoken impact on the way the reader interprets and feels about the
story. Indeed, the story is told by a narrator who looks at the story from a
certain angle, and as a story teller already interprets—or precisely avoids
interpretation of— what he sees or knows. The reader's perceptions of the
characters and the events in the story are hence clearly "colored" by
the narrator's point of view.
Compared with the
first person point of view, the third person point of view seems more
objective. Hiding her own characteristics, Porter tells the story in terms of
"she", an unintrusive narrator, who describes
or conveys the story as an onlooker through Granny's thoughts and feelings. It
seems for the reader that they can get the understanding of Granny by themselves
from the things that Porter reveals to them.
After a few
paragraphs, it becomes evident that the story is being told in the limited
omniscient third person point of view. The narration is limited to the thoughts
and actions of the Granny Weatherall, as she goes
through her final day. This point of view is well suited to the story as Porter moves to a
narration style that follows the stream-of-consciousness of Granny Weatherall. That is to say, Porter now limited herself only
in the experience, thoughts and emotions of the main character, not in other
characters present in the story. This kind of "self-effacing
narration" or "objective narration" makes the reader conscious
that someone might be somewhere telling the story. At the same time, Porter can clea
rly show her ideas by the help
of the main character, Granny Weatheral about the
persons around her or the things that happened to her. Hence Porter can sometimes
put the reader in the control of the views that she realizes the world.
Third person limited
point of view in this short story provides the ability to view the world
through Granny's eyes. One of the earliest examples of this is in the opening
paragraphs while she is being visited by Doctor Harry. She explains that many
years ago she endured about with double pneumonia and milk leg. In the time
that she lived, overcoming such illnesses was a feat. She performed that feat
and thus feels superior to the doctor. "Where were you forty years ago
when I pulled through milk-leg and double pneumonia? You weren't even
born."
Furthermore, for
the limited omniscient point of view, the narrator, Porter, seems to know only
the past and the present of Granny, not the future. In the beginning until the
end, readers can only know the development of the story through Granny's sees
and thinks. So Porter uses the technique to arouse the reader's interest to
continue reading the story. Is she dead in the end or the process of her last
hours?
In a word, Porter
only reveals the psychological world of Granny by stream of consciousness,
which seems too subjective for the reader. Blending with the limited omniscient
point of view ,Porter,as a observer,presents to the reader the whole thoughts, recall
and fluxion of emotion of Granny, which is more objective.
The readers
together with the narrator witness the process of Granny and suffer what she
endures, and they will perceive the whole life of the main character It does not feel alone for the reader. Thus they seem to get
the same vivid image of Granny.
Charactonym
A charactonym is a name that suggests the personality traits
of a fictional character, such as Thomas Gradgrind, a
character in Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times, subjects his students to a
grinding discipline of "facts, facts, and facts." In this short
story, Porter also exploits this technique to present the character ristics of Granny and indicate the destiny of her.
Her family name
is "Weatherall", that is, "weather
all". "Weather" means "to come through (something) safely or
to survive".Porter names her Weatherall
by indicating that Granny Weatherall has gone through
the hardship all during her eighty years: she has gone through being left at
the altar by George who she was going to marry, and her husband John who died.
After the death of John she is left with three kids to care and provide food
for, this is how Katherine Anne Porter shows that Granny is an intelligent and
strong willed woman. So from the name, the reader can get a general idea of
Granny.
While for the
other part of the title, Porter shows the finale of the poor old woman. The
main word "jilt" means "abandon", not only "be jilted”by her fiancé
sixty years ago, but also "will be jilted" by God.It
reveals to the reader the fact that strong-willed as she is, she is still
jilted by God, which cannot stop the reader to have sympathy with her, and will
arouse the question in their mind, why? Must it be the problem of the society? That
is the purpose of Porter's exploitation of this technique.
Theme
There are two prevalent
themes. The first is self-pity. The second theme is the acceptance of her
imminent demise. Both deal with the way people perceive their deaths and
mortality in general. Granny Weatherall's behavior is
Porter's tool for making these themes visible to the reader. The theme of
self-pity is obvious and thoroughly explored early on. As a young lady, Granny Weatherall left at the altar on her wedding day. The man
she loved failed to show up on their wedding day. Granny Weatherall's
self-pity gives the reader a negative initial impression of a woman Porter
eventually expects us to miss. The ailing octogenarian is so incredibly
annoying at the beginning of the story that one almost welcomes the idea of her
passing. The second theme is the acceptance of immanent death. At first, Granny
could not accept the fact that her days were numbered. She shows this when the
doctor is summoned and she says, "I won't see that boy again. He just left
five minutes ago." Later on, she continues her denial when Cornelia calls on
a priest to offer Granny her last rights. When the priest arrives, she would not
speak to him. She said, "I went to Holy Communion only last week. Tell him
I'll not so sinful as all that." As Granny's life
was winding down with only minutes remaining, she finally began to show signs
that she accepted what was happening to her. She began remembering those who
were important to her and dividing her possessions among family members. Porter
shows a loving side to Granny Weatherall that endears
her to the audience before she is whisked away from the land of the living. At
Granny's best while near the bitter end, 〖ZZ(Z〗The Jilting of Granny Weatherall gives us a brief overview of mortality. Porter
gives us slightly deeper insight into self-pity and the acceptance of death.
Granny Weatherall's actions and thoughts give the
reader an idea of how it feels as life draws to a close. Porter suggests that
by succeeding in dying well, one can leave behind an image of himself that is
more flattering than the legacy of their squandered lives.
All in all,
Porter displays a vivid image of an ordinary American woman in the south
through her delicate writing skills and elaborate arrangements. She probes into
the inner world of the main character subtly, and reveals the living situation
of American women at that time and discloses the common destiny of them. The
responsibility of women is to serve and be obedient to their families: hard work
and raising children. Society is centered only on men. What women do and think
should meet their needs.
Ellen Weatherall was ready for the wedding, but was jilted at the
altar with hearthreak, though Porter doesn't mention
it in the story, the reader still can find it through Porter's description of
Granny's interior monologue. Sixty years later, even at her dying, she will not
forgive George, who abandoned her. Since then, she became so strong-willed,
managed the farm and raised her young children after her husband died with
those gossips behind her. In those years, she did what the society asked for without
her own personalities. But she was still jilted by God. Why, the reader may
wonder, strong-willed as Granny Weathrall was, she
still failed at the end.
At the end of the
story, Porter describes the psychological state of Granny's anxieties to oppose
but powerless facing death visually. She appeals for the equality to women and
men. However, in the man-centered society, it seems so weak and helpless just
as human being faced the death. For Porter, what she can do is to reveal the
unjust society and call for more attention to the situation of women.
Nevertheless, the story is regarded as her representative for its delicate writing
techniques and good structure.
REFERENCES
Ronald Gottesman, Francis Murphy. (1979). The Norton Anthology of American Literature. v.2. New York London: W.W. Norton & Company Inc.George McMichael. (1980). Anthology of American
Literature. v.2.
Donald McQuade, Robert Atwan.
The Harper American Literature. v.2.
Harper and Row.Publishers,Inc.
Katherine Anne
Porter. The Collected stories of Katherine Anne Porter. (1965).
Charles Van Doren. (1984). Webster's American
Biographers. Murrain-Webster Inc.Jing Xiaoneng.Ed.(1983).Selected Works
by American Women Writers.Shanghai:Foreign Language
Education.
Yan Kaishen, Long Wenpei. Ed.(1987). Selected
Wan Peide. Ed. (1982). An Anthology of
Twentieth-Century American Fiction. v.1.
Li Yixie. Ed. (1990) Selected
责任编辑 邱承川 （南充职业技术学院学报２００５－４）