Granny Weatherall does not want to die. She tells her doctor to
leave her alone and go tend to the sick people. Her life is slipping away as she drifts in and
out of consciousness.
Granny’s story is told through a technique
labeled stream of consciousness. The reader is given access to the thoughts and memories of Ellen
“Granny” Weatherall, an eighty year old lady, and the protagonist for “The Jilting of Granny
Weatherall by Katherine Ann Porter.
In the beginning of the story,
Granny is still semi-lucid and can understand some of what is being said around her. Frustrated
because she can hear her daughter Cornelia speaking, Granny enjoys “plaguing her a
little.”
Unfortunately, most of her directions and comments remain
unstated and just in her mind. As the story continues, she slips farther back in her memories. In
her mind, she prepares her house for after she is gone. She wants to get rid of the letters that
she received and wrote to George and John.
The
jilting by George
The day progresses and Granny goes
deeper into her subconscious finally bringing up a memory that has haunted her for sixty years.
She was jilted at the altar by George. It is unlikely if Granny ever forgot George. If she had
forgotten him, she would not be so anxious to see him now. In fact, George’s jilting of
Granny is a shaping moment in her life. Her life and character were forever changed.
In her mind, she decides that she would like to see
George again. She tells whoever is listening to go and find George for her. Telling George about
her happy family would give her pleasure.
More likely, Granny wants
to see George so that he will be aware of what he missed out on. She wants George to see how she
has survived and prospered, and realize that the loss was really his. It is a form of
revenge.
She had
prayed against remembering him and against losing her soul in the deep pit of hell, and now the
two things were mingled in one and the thought of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and
crept in her head…Don’t let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get
jilted. You were jilted, weren’t you? Then stand up to
it…
Granny remains bitter about her
jilting. Although she had a good marriage with John and she grew to love him, she felt as if
something were missing from her relationship, something George took from her. She is unable to
identify what she lost, but perhaps it is passion or the ability to trust another man so deeply
as to form an intense bond with him.
It is as if the jilting, the
rejection of her so completely by George sixty years before, was so damaging to her self-esteem
that she had to keep everything in her life carefully controlled from that day
on.
Suddenly she feels a pain, and Granny remembers the pains of
childbirth. Near the surface of her consciousness, her daughter tells her that the priest is
there. Moving toward death, there is undercurrent of mental images that represent her death or
the jilting by George.
No comments:
Post a Comment