The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall by Katherine Anne Porter, 1931
The magic trick:
Bringing a woman’s sadness and hurt from life into her death
We’re doing a weekend double of Katherine Anne Porter, beginning with one of her more famous gems, “The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall.”
Granny is dying, and we spend her final minutes inside her mind as she alternates between fussing about what her family is doing around her in the present and thinking back through the memories of her life.
It’s a remarkable way to present a character’s biography. There are moments of wistful beauty. Moments of pride. And a lot of sadness. Her memories keep going back to the day when her would-be husband left her waiting at the altar. She treats the memory with defiance, insisting that her life turned out for the better, but it’s clearly still haunting her, literally on her deathbed.
The back-and-forth between memory and current reality is masterfully blended, culminating with a remarkable death scene that ties up the entire series of memories.
And that’s quite a trick on Porter’s part.
The selection:
Lighting the lamps had been beautiful. The children huddled up to her and breathed like little calves waiting at the bars in the twilight. Their eyes followed the match and watched the flame rise and settle in a blue curve, then they moved away from her. The lamp was lit, they did not have to be scared and hang on to mother anymore. Never, never, never more. God, for all my life I thank Thee. Without thee, my God, I could never have done it. Hail, Mary, full of grace.
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