The jilting of granny weatherall climax

Literary Analysis For The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall

An Approach to "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" Author(s): Eleanore M. Britton Source: The English Journal, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Apr., 1987), pp. 35-39 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/818446 Accessed: 23-04-2019 20:21 UTC

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A New Contributor

An Approach to "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"

Eleanore M. Britton

Every teacher of literature is occasionally treated to the supercilious reaction of students who dis- dain a suggested interpretation of a piece of lit- erature. To avoid such negative reactions, students must be taught an approach to literary interpre- tation to include a clear understanding of the ways a writer's background has influenced a work, an understanding of the time period in which the piece is set, and a careful reading of the text. This is particularly important if the work is open to contradictory interpretations.

In the teaching of "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter, it is imper- ative to use this approach to avoid student confu- sion. Students frequently react adversely after the first reading of this story. Typical comments include, "I read every word of that story, and I don't understand a word of it." More often student

reaction is just a blanket condemnation, such as "What a dumb story." To arrive at a meaningful interpretation and appreciation of the story, a teacher must guide students to use the resources available to penetrate the story's meaning.

"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" was pub- lished in 1929 in one of the "little magazines," Transition. Aside from her hack work as a journal- ist, Katherine Anne Porter refused to write the

kind of general appeal fiction published in mag- azines with broad circulation. Porter based the

story on what she called the "usable past" with Granny Weatherall bearing a close resemblance to her own grandmother.' Porter refers to her grand- mother as "a strong matriarchal type,"2 a charac- terization which also aptly describes Granny Weatherall. In the story, Granny Weatherall lies dying in her daughter Cornelia's home, annoyed

at the ministrations of Dr. Harry, the physician in attendance, whom she considers a mere school boy. Her daughter, Cornelia, with her solicitousness and extreme dutifulness, is also an irritant. Granny, who has been managing her life and lives of others for the past sixty years, has no tolerance for being managed. In her dying state, as Granny weaves in and out of consciousness, she no longer distinguishes past from present, memory from reality. But the facts of her life and the traits of her character emerge in a series of stream-of-con- sciousness flashbacks which Porter intertwines

with a stream-of-conscious insight into Granny's present dying state. Jilted at age twenty by George, Ellen Weatherall married John and had four chil- dren by him. After John died, she carried on alone, rearing the children, managing the farm, and meticulously sculpting every aspect of her life from the minutest detail of every day down to the preparation for death at age sixty. When death had not accommodated her at sixty, she tucked the thought away, and at age eighty, death takes her by surprise. Although she struggled against the temptation for sixty years, she has never gotten over George's jilting her at age twenty. In death she is jilted once again as Christ, the spiritual bridegroom, gives no tangible sign of coming to claim her soul.

Although this basic outline can be understood at a first reading, some of the ambiguities in the story have led to a variety of interpretations. To help students with the story, the teacher can use some of the techniques mentioned above. First, Porter's own background offers insights into an understanding of the story. Born in Indian Creek, Texas, in 1890, Porter moved to Kyle, Texas, at the

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death of her mother in 1892. There she was cared

for by her father's mother, Catherine Anne Porter, a strong, matriarchal woman who was the greatest influence on Porter's childhood. From her, Porter received "a sense of a woman's being independent, and totally in control of her world."3 Her reliance on her grandmother is apparent in that later in her life she changed her given name of Callie Rus- sell to Katherine Anne Porter, her grandmother's name with a modification of one letter.

Throughout her life, Porter modified her bio- graphical history to suit her own purposes. Most records agree that her family's religious back- ground was Methodist. But early in life, through the efforts of proselytizing aunts, she came under the influence of Roman Catholicism. After her

grandmother's death, she was sent to southern convent schools where she was further exposed to Roman Catholicism. At sixteen she ran away from school to marry John Koontz to whom she remained married for nine years. Three years after her marriage, through the influence of the Koontz family, she was converted to Roman Catholicism.

Although Porter found certain aspects of church dogma offensive, many aspects of Cathol- icism strongly appealed to her.4 Porter could not be called a practicing Catholic, but she knew and understood Catholic teaching. Clarifying Porter's religious affiliation is important since "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" is based on Catholic the- ology. The doctrines of sin, temptation, repent- ence, forgiveness, heaven, and hell are intricate and integral parts of the story, and to misinterpret them is to misinterpret the story.

Aside from Porter's religious affiliation, it is important for the student to understand the care- ful craftsmanship with which Porter approached her art. Every aspect of her stories is written to produce the desired effect. The reader must take careful note of the details of the story.

In telling the story of Granny Weatherall, Por- ter relied, for the most part, on the techniques of stream-of-consciousness, flashback, ambiguity, and epiphany. In a heterogenous grouping of stu- dents, a teacher cannot assume students are famil- iar with the term stream-of-consciousness. To clarify and apply the term, a teacher may ask students to consider all the random thoughts that have passed through their minds since they rose in the morn- ing. A teacher may also ask students to jot down

the random thoughts that have floated through their minds since they entered the classroom and note the lack of logical connection in these thoughts. Once students understand that this stream of thoughts is what the term stream-of-con- sciousness means, they will see that Porter uses this technique throughout. Instead of the usual short story elements of plot such as exposition, rising action, climax, and denouement, Porter skillfully uses stream-of-consciousness not merely to delin- eate the character of Granny Weatherall but to tell her life's story as well.

Most students will be familiar with the term

flashback. By carefully noting the series of stream- of-consciousness episodes in which Porter shifts from the past to Granny's present condition, one in which she weaves in and out of consciousness,

students will see a portrait of a dominating, matriarchal woman who tried to engineer every detail of her life. As she lies dying, Granny con- siders Dr. Harry, the attending physician, as a brat, a mere school boy and gives him the peremptory command to get along with his schoolbooks and leave her alone.

How desperately ill Granny is becomes appar- ent early in the story in her reflection that "her bones felt loose and floated around in her skin"5

and that she does not have enough energy to wave goodbye to Dr. Harry. Her antagonism toward Cornelia is apparent from the outset. To Granny, a forthright, outspoken, headstrong woman, Cor- nelia's tact, her tiptoeing around, and her whis- pering are irritating. Granny emerges as a person who ordered every detail of her life from "hair brushes and tonic bottles sitting straight on the white embroidered linen" to "the bronze clock

with the lion on top nicely dusted off." In her reminiscences, Granny recalls a box of

letters in the attic, something not tidied up, some- thing left undone. This box contains "George's let- ters and John's letters and her letters to them both." Recollecting the hidden letters, Granny feels uneasy, not wanting her children to "know how silly she had been once."

The letters represent one of the puzzling ambi- guities of the story. Students need to understand that a writer uses ambiguity to allow multiple interpretations. Ambiguity deliberately employed by a writer indicates that no clear answers are intended and opens up the way for the reader to explore various interpretations merely hinted at.

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Given a woman of Granny's meticulous habits, the letters seem enigmatic.

What is Porter's purpose in telling the reader that Granny has "George's letters and John's let- ters and her letters to them both?" Since John is her husband, it is understandable that she may have kept his letters over the years. But why, after sixty years, does she have letters from the man who jilted her? The story makes no further ref- erence to the letters, but Granny's reference to them suggests several possibilities: she saved George's letters of sixty years ago because she has not really gotten over him or George has written to her during the intervening years. If the latter is true, it's possible that George may have written to offer some explanation of the jilting or tried to communicate with her after John's death.

Even more provocative is her statement that she has her letters to George and John. Although she might have her husband's letters because he had kept them, why should she fear her children's find- ing them? Has she cloaked herself with the image of the iron-willed, resolute woman who spurns the thought of having her children see that she was vulnerable to love? A woman who clings to letters over many decades may be a woman who is incap- able of closing out the early chapters of her life. The most enigmatic phrase is that she has her letters to George. Granny has not seen George in sixty years, but perhaps she would like to see him now that she is dying to assure him that she has forgotten him. Clearly, Granny has not forgotten George.

In discussing the story, students have suggested that Granny was pregnant when George jilted her on her wedding day. Several critics have suggested that Granny's first born child was named George. If this were true, that might lend some credence to the student's theory. But the story offers no con- crete support for Granny's having a child named George. The story contains only one reference to George that might be interpreted as a child. As Granny lies dying, she ticks off the names "Hapsy? George? Lydia? Jimmy?" Rather than a listing of children, this seems to be a listing of people she wishes to see. She has already asked Cornelia to find George, the man who jilted her, and she has repeatedly asked for Hapsy. Lydia and Jimmy are the other children she asks for repeatedly. As Granny gathers her children around her in death, she clings to them, and, as in a litany, mentions

the objects she wishes to bequeath to them. Though she repeatedly mentions Hapsy, Lydia, Jimmy, and Cornelia, a son named George is never mentioned.

The fact that Granny has her letters to George can only mean that she has written letters to him that she has never sent. The contents of these let-

ters remain ambiguous. Was Granny pregnant when she was jilted? Did this circumstance increase the pain of the jilting? Is Cornelia, in fact, George's child? Since she repeatedly claims she had her husband, her family, her home, in spite of George, this does not seem likely, but the hint is there. The letters are surely another clue to Granny's vulnerability to love, to an emotional wound that has never healed. Does Granny worry about the letters because of their disclosure of

human frailty which contradicts the image she has forged for herself as a strong, indomitable woman in full command of her life? The ambiguity of the letters and their contents points to some unre- vealed disclosures.

Hapsy represents another of the ambiguities in the story. In her reverie, Granny confuses the pain of her death agony with the pain of childbearing, and, more precisely, with the birth of Hapsy. Throughout the story Hapsy remains somewhat of an enigma with the implication that she is much loved but also the source of pain. The story con- tains some irrefutable clues. Hapsy is the youngest daughter, the one whom Granny says she wanted most, the one for whom Granny searches unsuc- cessfully throughout the story.

When she thinks about Hapsy's birth, Granny reflects that the child should have been born first, for this was the "one she had truly wanted." In her reverie, she calls on John to get the doctor at Hap- sy's birth, a proof that John had not died quite as young as the story otherwise implies. As she pre- pares for the birth of Hapsy, she reflects that she will be well in three days. But this did not happen. In the opening of the story, when Granny dis- misses Dr. Harry, she taunts him with his youth saying, "Where were you forty years ago when I pulled through milk leg and double pneumonia?" Since milk leg is a disease associated with child bearing, this illness must have followed Hapsy's birth, for we know that Hapsy is the last child. In their zeal for intrigue, students frequently suggest Hapsy is George's child, and this is the reason she was the one Granny truly wanted. But this inter-

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pretation has no foundation in fact since Granny has not seen George in sixty years.

The name Hapsy adds to the ambiguity of the character. It has been suggested that the name Hapsy represents for Granny the "embodiment of the happiness that eluded her all of her life."6 But it seems more plausible the name is based on the word hap. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines hap in this way: "archaic- n. 1) one's luck or lot. 2) an occurrence, happen- ing, or accident.-v. 3) to happen" Since the name Happy is listed in the same dictionary as a girl's name, it seems Porter would have called the girl Happy if she were to represent the joy that eluded Granny. It seems more plausible that the name Hapsy refers to the circumstance of her concep- tion, that she was a kind of lucky accident. Since Hapsy is not a given name such as Granny's other children, Cornelia, Lydia, Jimmy, it seems reason- able to conclude that it was a pet name given to an unborn child. The events of the story, Granny's illness at the birth of her last child and the elu-

siveness of Hapsy, all lend credence to the possi- bility that Hapsy died at birth.

In her reverie, Granny tells John to get the doc- tor since her time has come, and later she says Hapsy's time has come. Although the latter state- ment might be interpreted to mean Hapsy's giving birth, it seems rather to be a reference to Granny's giving birth to Hapsy. Since the story states that John died at a relatively young age, he would not have been alive when Hapsy was of child-bearing age. Both references seem to be to Hapsy's birth. A moment later Granny sees Hapsy at her bed with a white cap on. With her failing senses, Granny has mistaken the nurse for Hapsy. After Granny goes back through a great many rooms to find Hapsy, Porter says she finds Hapsy holding a baby and follows with the ambiguous statement, "She seemed to herself to be Hapsy also, and the baby in Hapsy's arm was Hapsy, and himself and herself, all at once, and there was no surprise in the meeting."

In the story Granny never meets Hapsy except in a kind of reverie or in a vision of life to come.

Although the himself in the above quotation has been interpreted to mean George,' it is more likely that the himself is John. Although the character of Hapsy is ambiguous, it seems reasonable to sup- pose that given the facts of Granny's illness at Hapsy's birth, her preference for Hapsy, the pet name Hapsy, Granny's going back through "many

rooms" to find Hapsy, and the shadowy elusiveness of Hapsy throughout the story, she is Granny's last child lost in childbirth. Just as Granny cannot destroy her letters or forget George, she cannot forget Hapsy, a child dead forty years. Since Hapsy and John are both dead, she links the two in the statement "the baby in Hapsy's arm was Hapsy and himself and herself, all at once," with the implication that she and John in the bond of marriage are one and that Hapsy is the fruit of that love.

Another of the much-disputed ambiguities in the story is Ellen Weatherall's relation to George. After all those years, she has not forgotten the wound of the first jilting. The dark smoke of that memory clouds "the bright field where everything was planted so carefully in orderly rows." That painful memory casts a dark shadow over the bright, careful order she had tried to establish in her life. She recalls that "for sixty years she had prayed against remembering him and against los- ing her soul in the deep pit of hell." She chides herself not to let this wounded vanity from the past triumph and to accept the reality of her jilt- ing. A little later she demands that Cornelia find George so she can tell him that she had everything his jilting would have denied her-a home, a hus- band, children. But suddenly there comes to Granny the realization that something was missing in her life.

"Oh no, oh, God, no, there was something else beside the house and the man and the children.

Oh, surely they were not all? What was it? Some- thing not given back." Again, this agonized state- ment is open to speculation. Some critics have coupled Granny's bitter memories of the jilting by George with the jilting of the heavenly bridegroom at the end of the story and have interpreted the story to mean that Granny is damned to hell for clinging to the memory of George and her inabil- ity to forgive him.

This interpretation is contrary to the Roman Catholic theology of sin and punishment on which the story is based. In Catholic teaching, people are condemned to hell only if they knowingly and will- ingly commit a grievous sin and refuse to repent. Temptation is not sin. As long as temptation is resisted, even though it recurs, a person is not guilty of grievous sin and is not deserving of hell. In the course of her reverie, Granny says, "God for all of my life, I thank thee. Without Thee, my God, I could never have done it." Note here that

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Granny thanks God for "all of her life," a phrase that includes the jilting. She acknowledges that only God's grace has sustained her, has enabled her to resist the recurring temptation. In her preparation for death, she has observed the tra- ditional practices of the church, has gone to confession, and received the last rites. Porter says Granny felt "easy" about her soul.

As Death, symbolized as a man driving a cart, comes to fetch Granny, it seems to her as she begins her journey, that "the trees leaned over and bowed to each other and a thousand birds were

singing a Mass." This description implies an entrance to Paradise, not a plunge into eternal perdition. She recalls that even though George jilted her, she found "another a whole world better."

As death draws closer, Granny's peace explodes into a storm as she hears thunder and sees the

flash of lightning. At this moment, Porter uses a sudden moment of revelation, as Granny under- stands in a flash that "her time" has really come, and she is not ready in spite of all her prepara- tions. At this point, the student will need to be familiar with the Joycean technique of the epi- phany, the sudden understanding in which char- acters understand some fundamental truth about

themselves or their situations. Although the tech- nique is frequently used in the modern short story, most students will not be familiar with it. As this

moment comes to Granny, her mind runs hur- riedly through a litany of intended bequests as she attempts to make final arrangements. She searches frantically for Hapsy but does not find her. As she lies there "amazed and watchful," she pleads, "God, give a sign," but no sign is forthcoming as Granny stretches herself with a deep breath and blows out the light of her life. Once again, the bridegroom does not appear. Granny is jilted by the heavenly bridegroom who does not appear at her death to receive her soul.

The second jilting has been the subject of con- jecture. In the light of Catholic theology and the lifelong temptation that Granny resisted, the jilt- ing can scarcely mean condemnation to hell. Recalling the careful delineation of Ellen Weath- erall as a woman who plotted and planned every detail of her life, who weathered a jilting and made a new life with John, who according to her own words wouldn't have exchanged him for any- body but St. Michael, the moment of revelation

reveals to her that in spite of all her planning death is taking her by surprise. That moment pin- points the basic truth of the mystery of life and death, a mystery that even the most resourceful planner cannot forestall or anticipate. Death maintains for everyone an element of surprise; it remains for all the ultimate mystery.

Since Porter was not a traditional Catholic, in

the common interpretation of that phrase, she never fully accepted a belief in a life after death.8 She somewhat blithely stated that it made no dif- ference to her personally if there was life after death or not. In view of this, is Porter suggesting that Granny's whole life, her struggle against temptation, to make a life for herself after the jilt- ing, has no value if eternity does not exist? This would indeed be the most cruel jilting of all. It seems improbable, however, that Porter is suggest- ing that life is little more than a cruel hoax the Almighty has perpetrated on gullible humanity. It seems more in keeping with Granny Weatherall's character and Porter's intention that death is not

final and enclosed. We cannot wrench the circum-

stances of our lives to fit into a neat little plan, and death is a mystery that even the most astute plan- ner cannot penetrate. When Granny Weatherall blows out the light of her life, she goes forward to confront this mystery.

Footnotes

1. George Hendrick, Katherine Anne Porter. New York: Twayne, 1964, p. 60.

2. Enrique Hank Lopez, Conversations with Katherine Anne Porter. Boston: Little Brown, 1981, p. 28.

3. Joan Givner, Katherine Anne Porter: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982, pp. 52-53.

4. Givner, op cit., p. 101.

5. Katherine Anne Porter, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1965, p. 80. All quotations from the story are taken from this text.

6. John Edward Hardy, Katherine Anne Porter. New York: Ungar, 1973, p. 93.

7. Hendrick, op cit., p. 91.

8. Givner, op cit., p. 509.

Eleanore M. Britton teaches at Crown

Point High School, Indiana.

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Contents
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Issue Table of Contents
English Journal, Vol. 76, No. 4, Apr., 1987
Front Matter [pp. 1 - 95]
Editors' Page: Old Editors Never Die, They Just Write Away [p. 13]
News and the English Profession [pp. 14 - 15]
Facets: Where Should We English Teachers Be Heading in the Next Ten Years and Why? [pp. 16 - 19]
Tapping Teacher Potential Using "Tapping Potential" [pp. 20 - 23]
YA Afro-American Fiction: An Update for Teachers [pp. 24 - 27]
I Write Dedications [p. 28]
Quiet! [p. 28]
Your State Can Do It, Too [pp. 29 - 30]
CuisinArt [p. 30]
Everybody Needs One [pp. 31 - 32]
Computers and the Humanist: The Myth and Reality [pp. 33 - 34]
An Approach to "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" [pp. 35 - 39]
"Farang" for a Day, Or 200 Students in One Class--You Must Be Joking! [pp. 40 - 42]
Bitter Milk [p. 42]
A Beautiful Writing Assignment for Sophomores [pp. 43 - 44]
The Price of Change [p. 44]
On First Seeing a Copy of Keats's Life-Mask [pp. 45 - 49]
Class Notes [p. 49]
Guyfun and Galfun in the Classroom [pp. 50 - 51]
Lost Rites [p. 52]
Starting a Weekly TV Show (Cable) with No Money Down [pp. 53 - 54]
Classroom Bond [p. 55]
Why I Love Teaching the Gifted, Hated Seeing "Brazil", and Am Dropping "A Tale of Two Cities" [pp. 56 - 58]
Oh, Thank Heaven for Comic Strip Bubbles [pp. 59 - 60]
Let Them Beg You for Grammar [pp. 61 - 63]
Our Readers Write: If You Had One Wish You Could Grant All English Teachers, What Would It Be? [pp. 64 - 70]
Recommended: Cynthia Voigt [pp. 71 - 72]
Too Good to Miss [pp. 73 - 74]
New Publications for Teachers: Pick of the Pack: Four Years of Columns
untitled [p. 76]
untitled [p. 76]
untitled [pp. 76 - 77]
untitled [p. 77]
untitled [p. 77]
untitled [p. 77]
untitled [p. 77]
untitled [pp. 77 - 78]
untitled [p. 78]
untitled [p. 78]
The Better to Eat You [p. 78]
Junior High/Middle School: Gathering and Sharing for Homework [pp. 79 - 80]
Young Adult Literature: Books Too Good to Miss--That We Almost Missed [pp. 81 - 84]
Electronic Media: Film as Documentation, Social Comment, Satire, and Spoof [pp. 85 - 87]
Portrait of the Artist as Teacher (Or the Teacher as Artist) [p. 87]
Classroom Inquiry: Teachers as Researchers? [pp. 88 - 90]
Recommended Software: Interactive Fiction
[Introduction] [p. 91]
untitled [pp. 91 - 92]
At St. Jude's [p. 93]
NCTE to You [pp. 96 - 100]
Back Matter