I think one element about Granny Weatherall's character
that comes across incredibly strongly is her independence and inner-strength. Part of
the reason why she is so cantankerous in her near-death state is because suddenly she
has to be dependent after years of being independent. Consider one of her memories of
her life before getting old:
In her day she had kept a better house and had
got more work done. She wasn't too old yet for Lydia to be driving eighty miles for
advice when one of the children jumped the track, and Jimmy still dropped inand talked
things over: "Now, Mammy, you've a good business head. I want to know what you think of
this?... Old. Cornelia couldn't change the furniture around without asking. Little
things, little things!
We can
see then that Granny was considered capable, intelligent, and reliable; her grown
children came to her for advice and she is immensely proud of her homemaking skills and
her capacity for hard work. We can see then that these qualities have a massive impact
on her outlook on life as she looks at life through her "lens" of independence and
inner-strength, so that at the end of the story, she meets death with the same customary
strength as she has shown throughout the entire story.
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