Why Does Granny Weatherall Want to See Hapsy Again
By Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)
A Study Guide
.
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
.
.......Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" is a short story told partly with a narrative technique known every bit stream of consciousness, a term coined by American psychologist William James (1842-1910). With this technique, an author portrays a character'south continuing "stream" of thoughts as they occur, regardless of whether they brand sense or whether the next idea in a sequence relates to the previous thought.
.......The story is told in third-person signal of view by a narrator who oftentimes reveals the thoughts of Granny Weatherall in language that Granny would use if she were speaking. Because Granny is disoriented, these thoughts focus on present perceptions 1 moment and on old memories the next. Her perceptions and recollections favor her positive view of herself.
Twelvemonth of Publication
......."The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" was starting time published in Feb 1929 in transition (uncapitalized), an English-language literary journal printed in Paris. The publication featured experimental writing. A year later, the story was published in a collection of Porter's stories entitled Flowering Judas and Other Stories.
.
Setting
.......The action takes place in a bedroom in the home of Granny Weatherall'southward daughter Cornelia. Granny, almost fourscore, is lying face up up in the bed. She is dying of an undisclosed illness. The time is probably the late 1920s. Flashbacks, however, date as far back as the late 1860s, when Granny's fianc� abandoned her on the solar day they were to exist married.
Characters
Ellen (Granny) Weatherall: Feisty woman of about fourscore who ruminates almost events in her life as she lies dying in the home of her daughter Cornelia. Because of her illness, she is lucid 1 moment and disoriented the adjacent. A painful retention, 1 she had repressed for lx years, surfaces and haunts her at the hour of her death. Information technology is the memory of the twenty-four hours—lx years before—when her fianc�, George, jilted her. After she later married a man named John, she gave birth to four children. John died young simply Granny carried on, rearing the children, working her farmland and orchard, and caring for animals.
Cornelia: Daughter of Granny. While her mother is on her deathbed, Cornelia takes care of her.
George: Human being who abandoned Granny on the twenty-four hour period he was to marry her.
John: Deceased husband of Granny.
Physician Harry: Granny'southward physician.
Hapsy: Girl of Granny and, the narration says, the only child Granny "actually wanted." The story implies that she has preceded her female parent in decease.
Jimmy: Son of Granny.
Lydia: Girl of Granny.
Lydia's Husband: Man whom Granny considers "worthless."
Nurse: Person who accompanies the md on a dark visit to Granny's bedside.
Father Connolly: Roman Catholic priest who comes to requite Granny the church'southward last rites.
Sister Borgia: Nun whom Granny wants to send six bottles of wine for indigestion.
Male parent of Granny: Man who lived to age 102. He attributed his longevity to his do of drinking a hot toddy every twenty-four hours.
. .
Plot Summary
Past Michael J. Cummings ... � 2010
.......Medico Harry feels Granny Weatherall'due south pulse, just she pushes him abroad, saying, "Get forth now. Take your schoolbooks and go. There's zip wrong with me." He then feels her forehead and tells her to be sure to remain in bed.
.......When he goes out, Granny closes her eyes just reopens them when she hears Cornelia and the medico whispering.
......."She was never like this, never like this!"
.......Cornelia's kindness and attentiveness annoy Granny, and she pictures herself spanking her daughter. Granny drowses, thinking she had had a long day. At that place was ever something to exist done. She reviews the chores for the next day (mayhap her manner of putting her life in order earlier dying), including folding laundry, putting the pantry in social club, dusting the bronze clock. And then, the narrator says, there was the business organization of the letters in the attic: "George's letters and John's letters and her messages to them both—lying around for the children to find afterward made her uneasy."
.......When she was sixty, Granny began preparing for expiry past visiting her children and grandchildren, thinking information technology would exist the concluding they would see of her. She made out her will, then got sick. Just when she recovered, she decided to live on for a long time. Her father had made information technology to a hundred and ii, challenge that a noggin of potent toddy each day accounted for his longevity.
.......She thought again of Cornelia, of how she would say, "Don't cross her, let her accept her way, she's eighty years old." Granny had a mind to pack up and become back to her own domicile so she wouldn't accept to put up with such nonsense. As far as beingness old is concerned, Granny notes to herself that Lydia all the same drives eighty miles to ask for communication on handling her children, and Jimmy comes over to get her opinion on business matters. She wishes see could see her tardily husband, John, to point out what a good job she did raising the children. All the children are older than John now. But later all the work she had done—even digging mail service holes for fences—he probably wouldn't recognize her.
......."John would exist looking for a young adult female with a peaked Spanish comb in her pilus and the painted fan," she thinks. "Digging post holes changed a woman. Riding state roads in the winter when women had their babies was some other thing: sitting up nights with ill horses and sick negroes and sick children and hardly ever losing one."
.......Granny recalls other memories. Near calling the children in when a fog was creeping over the orchard, then lighting the lamps in the business firm so they didn't have to exist agape anymore. Most having them selection all the fruit so zilch went to waste matter.
.......So she remembers the day she was jilted. For sixty years, the narrator says, she had prayed against remembering George and now the retentiveness of him occupied her as she was trying to residue. The narrator reports what she is thinking: "Wounded vanity, Ellen. . . . Don't let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you."
.......Cornelia comes in and tells her female parent that the doctor has arrived to look in on her.
......."He left just five minutes agone," Granny says.
.......Only Cornelia informs her he had last checked her in the morning. Information technology is now night. A nurse has come in likewise. When Cornelia says the doc is going to give her a hypodermic, Granny says she's been seeing saccharide ants in her bed.
....... Her girl Hapsy appears before her and says, "I idea you'd never come" (suggesting that Hapsy has already died and has been waiting for her female parent in the afterworld). "You haven't changed a bit!"
.......Granny wants someone to find George. The narrator reveals her thoughts:
.......Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him. I desire him to know I had my husband only the same and my children and my business firm like any other adult female. A good house too and a good husband that I loved and fine children out of him. Ameliorate than I had hoped for even. Tell him I was given dorsum everything he took abroad and more than. Oh, no, oh, God, no, there was something else too the house and the man and the children. Oh, surely they were not all? What was information technology? Something non given back. . . ........Father Connolly, a Roman Catholic priest, arrives to give her the concluding rites of the church. Granny thinks about how he used to "drop in and inquire about her soul as if it were a teething babe, and then stay on for a cup of tea and a round of cards and gossip."
.......Granny muses that she has no worries about her soul, for her "favorite saints" have already cleared her a path to heaven. Her eyes open, and the light is blue because of the color of the lampshades. The narrator says Granny's thoughts return to the day of the jilting: "What if he did run away and leave me to face the priest past myself? I found another a whole earth amend. I wouldn't accept exchanged my husband for anybody except St. Michael himself. . . ."
.......Granny sees the bluish light flutter and die. Endless darkness envelops her, and she asks God for a sign.
.......But, the narrator says, at that place is no sign: "Again no bridegroom and the priest in the firm. She could not remember whatsoever other sorrow because this grief wiped them all away. "
.......A moment later she dies.
.......In the championship, jilting tin can refer not only to the jilting of Granny by George but also to Granny'south belief that God has jilted her. The proper name Weatherall suggests that Granny believes she has weathered all the adversities of life.
. .
Themes
Responding to Loss With Perseverance
....... The overall theme of "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" is how one adult female, Ellen Weatherall, responds to loss by persevering. First, her fiance, George, abased her. Consequently, she lost not but her future husband but also a expert measure of her cocky-esteem. Eventually, she married a man named John and bore him four children. Simply John died immature, leaving her to finish rearing the children. So i of the children—Hapsy, her favorite—died, too, after bearing a kid of her own. Granny's losses brand their marker on her, as the following passage indicates. In a flashback, Granny is speaking to her children. Note the boldfaced letters in red that relate to the theme.
I want you to pick all the fruit this year and see cypher is wasted. There's always someone who can use it. Don't let good things rot for want of using. You lot waste life when y'all waste good food. Don't allow things get lost. It's biting to lose things .Simply Granny lived up to her name past weathering all her losses. She did so through her feistiness, her strong will to conduct on, and her repression of the painful retentivity of the twenty-four hour period George jilted her. She is proud of how well she faced up to her responsibilities. The narrator says,
Information technology had been a hard pull, simply not likewise much for her. When she idea of all the nutrient she had cooked, and all the dress she had cut and sewed, and all the gardens she had made—well, the children showed it. There they were, made out of her, and they couldn't become abroad from that. Sometimes she wanted to see John again and signal to them and say, Well, I didn't exercise so badly, did I?....... When Granny lies dying in the dwelling house of her girl—facing still another loss, the loss of her own life—the repressed memory of George emerges to haunt her deathbed ruminations. The moment comes when, in her disoriented country, her listen conjures the post-obit scene: "A fog rose over the valley, she saw it marching across the creek swallowing the trees and moving up the hill like an army of ghosts. Soon information technology would exist at the near edge of the orchard, and so it was time to go in and lite the lamps. Come in, children, don't stay out in the nighttime air."
....... In this vision of her past, she attempts to banish the memory of George (the fog) by taking the children inside and striking a friction match to the oil lamps. Her strategy succeeds for a moment, as the narrative reports: "Lighting the lamps had been cute. The children huddled up to her and breathed like little calves waiting at the confined in the twilight. Their eyes followed the friction match and watched the flame rise and settle in a bluish curve, then they moved away from her. The lamp was lit, they didn't accept to be scared and hang on to mother any more."
....... Merely the memory of George comes back.
The pillow rose nigh her shoulders and pressed confronting her heart and the memory was existence squeezed out of it. . . . . For threescore years 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 ane and the idea of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and crept in her head when she had just got rid of Md Harry and was trying to rest a minute. Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a precipitous voice in the top of her mind. Don't let your wounded vanity get the upper mitt of you lot. Plenty of girls become jilted. Yous were jilted, weren't you? Then stand up to information technology........ Before she slips away and dies, Granny thinks she is facing the ultimate loss, the loss of God Himself, as her internal monologue indicates: "For a second fourth dimension there was no sign. Again no bridegroom and the priest in the house. She could not remember any other sorrow because this grief wiped them all abroad. Oh, no, there'southward nothing more cruel than this—I'll never forgive it."
....... Here, Granny responds with typical feistiness--"I'll never forgive it."
....... Expiry, beware.
Repression
....... Instead of facing and dealing with the memory of George'south jilting of her, Granny represses it. For threescore years, she keeps it locked in a deep recess in her soul. To what extent her repression of this memory impairs the quality of her life is uncertain. In her deathbed reflections, she seems to suggest that she was better off without George: "What if he did run away and leave me to face the priest past myself? I found some other a whole world better. I wouldn't take exchanged my husband for anybody except St. Michael himself. . . . "
....... But why does she keep his messages to her? Why does the retention of him haunt her at the terminate of her life?
Following in Christ's Footsteps
....... Granny has many faults, not the least of which is criticizing others. All the same, in her own way, she tries to follow in Christ's footsteps. Consider, for example, that Granny underwent a humiliating public rejection when George jilted her and that she suffered through many trials, including "riding land roads in the winter when women had their babies" and "sitting up nights with sick horses and ill negroes and ill children." The suffering and rejection endured by Granny phone call to listen this Bible quotation: "[T]he Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the ancients and past the high priests" (Marking eight: 31).
.......Granny's perseverance and her organized religion in God enabled her to come through her difficulties, equally she notes: "God, for all my life, I give thanks Thee. Without Thee, my God, I could never have done information technology." On her deathbed, she has a notion that she will fifty-fifty overcome her fatal illness: "She was strong, in three days she would be as well equally ever. Amend." This passage echoes the following Bible passages:
And . . . after three days [He volition] ascension once again. (Mark viii:31).......At the terminal moment of her life, Granny believes God has forsaken her, saying to herself, "Once again no bridegroom and the priest in the house." This passage calls to mind words spoken by Christ on the cross: "And near the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani? that is, My God, my God, why hast yard forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).
Jesus . . . said to them: Destroy this temple, and in iii days I will raise it up. (John 2:19)
The Son of human being must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the tertiary day rise once more. (Luke 24:seven)
....... When Granny dies, the narrator says, she "stretched herself with a deep breath and blew out the calorie-free." Of Christ's last moment, John nineteen:thirty reports, "Jesus said 'it is finished.' With that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." . .
Granny's Attitude Toward Cornelia, Hapsy
....... In her deathbed reflections, Granny resents Cornelia's doting presence. Consider the following passage:
Information technology was like Cornelia to whisper effectually doors. She always kept things secret in such a public way. She was e'er existence tactful and kind. Cornelia was dutiful; that was the trouble with her. Dutiful and expert: "So proficient and dutiful," said Granny, "that I'd like to spank her." She saw herself spanking Cornelia and making a fine job of it.When Cornelia asks Granny whether she wants annihilation, Granny replies, "I do. I want a lot of things. First off, become abroad and don't whisper." The narration later reports that
[Granny] could just hear Cornelia telling her married man that Female parent was getting a little childish and they'd take to humor her. The thing that about bellyaching her was that Cornelia thought she was deaf, dumb, and bullheaded. Little hasty glances and tiny gestures tossed around hither and over her head saying, "Don't cross her, let her take her way, she'southward eighty years onetime," and she sitting there as if she lived in a sparse glass cage. Sometimes granny most made up her mind to pack up and move back to her own house where nobody could remind her every minute that she was old. Wait, look, Cornelia, till your own children whisper behind your back!One could interpret Granny'southward resentment of Cornelia as a sign that she is the daughter of George and therefore a abiding reminder of him.
....... Hapsy, on the other hand, is a favorite of Granny. A possible reason for her favored position is that she may have been the 2d of Granny'south children and the showtime born to John. Hapsy's nascency thus would accept been a proclamation of independence from George, whom Granny wished to banish from her mind. Granny would be able to say, "I have my own child now and a hubby who stands past me. I don't need George."
....... But was Hapsy the second child? There'southward a good chance that she was. In ane of her internal monologues, Granny says, "When this one [Hapsy] was born it should be the final. The last. Information technology should accept been born start, for it was the one she had truly wanted." Notice that the first sentence says should be last, non was last, and that the second says should have been born first, not was born first. Therefore, Hapsy was either the second or 3rd child.
Climax and the Questions It Raises
....... The climax occurs when Granny cannot perceive the presence of God as she lapses toward expiry. Amid the possible reasons Granny believes God is "jilting" her are the following:
- George's abandonment of her so damaged her self-esteem that she now believes she is non worthy of heaven. Although Granny asserts in her musings that she has weathered the hurt George caused, clearly the jilting has had a long-term result. "For sixty years," the narrator says, "she had prayed against remembering him." Her prayers are an acknowledgment that the memory of George has remained firmly lodged in her mind.
- She committed a sin that she believes has jeopardized her salvation. For example, it is possible that she became pregnant with George's infant, and so hurriedly married John later on the jilting to avoid the stigma of bearing a kid out of spousal relationship. Having sexual relations exterior wedlock is a grave sin in Roman Catholicism. Of grade, she no dubiety would accept confessed her sin and performed penance, only she could have experienced lingering guilt. Information technology may be, as well, that she wronged John by allowing him to believe that all of the children were his.
- Her illness has muddled her thinking.
- She is experiencing a normal fear of death and the inability of humans to grasp fully the concept of God.
.......Post-obit are examples of figures of speech in the story.
Alliteration
Repetition of a consonant audio
L igh t ing the l amps had b een b eau t iful.Irony
A ll as sure 50 y due south igned and south ea fifty ed as the papers f or the new f orty acres.
Evolution that is the contrary of what is expected
Cornelia says to Granny, "Oh, is at that place anything y'all want to tell me? Is at that place annihilation I can do for you lot?" Granny responds with these thoughts: "Yes, she had changed her mind after sixty years and she would similar to run across George. I desire you lot to find George. Find him and exist sure to tell him I forgot him."Metaphor
Here, Granny's desire to discover George contradicts her exclamation that she has forgotten him--a bit of humor that lightens the deathbed atmosphere.
Comparing of unlike things without using similar, as, or than
Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening shape with cutting edges. (Comparing of breath to an object with abrupt edges)Onomatopoeia
Word that imitates a audio
She listened to the leaves rustling outside the window. No, somebody was swishing newspapers.Paradox
Contradictory statement that is actually true
She always kept things secret in such a public way .Simile
Comparison of unlike things using like, as, or than
He had cursed like a sailor's parrot. (Comparison of a human to a parrot)Fascinating Fact About the Author
.......In an interview with Barbara Thompson (Writers at Work, 1963) Katherine Anne Porter said she ever wrote the final paragraph of a story first, and so backed up and wrote virtually all of the events leading up to the events described in the concluding paragraph. It was important for her to know the destination of her literary journey kickoff so that she could set a class (similar sailors and airline pilots) leading to the destination.
. .
Study Questions and Essay Topics
1...Granny says she prayed for sixty years to forget George. Why, then, did she go on his letters?
2...Why is Granny concerned about the letters in the attic?
3...Granny indicates in her deathbed reflections that she loved John. Did she really? Or was she merely trying to persuade herself that she did?
four...Read the following quotation from the story:
Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him. I want him to know I had my married man simply the same and my children and my house like whatever other woman. A good house too and a proficient husband that I loved and fine children out of him. Better than I had hoped for even. Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more. Oh, no, oh, God, no, there was something else too the house and the man and the children. Oh, surely they were non all? What was it? Something not given dorsum. . . .In your opinion, what was the "something not given back"?
5...Write a pyschological portraint of Granny. Include research from the story and other sources to support your thesis.
6...Why wasn't Granny in a hospital?
7... Granny represents everyone. After all, everyone struggles against loss--the loss of faith, promise, love, respect, self-esteem, prestige, loyalty, power, coin, mental health, physical health, and fifty-fifty footling objects such as machine keys. The play a joke on is to persevere. Write an essay about a loss (or losses) you suffered and what you did to carry on.
.
.
. Source: https://cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides5/jilting.html
0 Response to "Why Does Granny Weatherall Want to See Hapsy Again"
Post a Comment