The character of Granny Weatherall, the central character in Katherine Anne Porter's 'The Jilting of Granny Weatherall'.

Authors Avatar

        

        Granny Weatherall, the central character in Katherine Anne Porter’s The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, is an 80-year-old elderly woman who is staring death in the face.  There is a sense of disappointment with Granny that leads readers to develop their own interpretation of her relationship with her daughter, Cornelia.  As the narrator, Granny unintentionally paints the picture of Cornelia as a nuisance and bothersome person.  Granny thinks to herself, “The thing that most annoyed her was that Cornelia thought she was deaf, dumb, and blind.  Little hasty glances and tiny gestures tossed around her and over her head…”  (2).  In fact, the reader can rationalize that it is just Cornelia’s concern for her ailing mother that creates the situation of her seemingly being there all the time.  Granny is having mental flashbacks as death approaches like “a fog rose over the valley” (3).  Granny recalls events throughout her life, from being left at the altar on her wedding day, to losing a child, to coming to grips with her own death as the story reaches a close.  All of these recollections and the realization of her own death bring together the great ironies of the story, ironies which cause not one, but two jiltings for Granny.  

        As you read the story, the first irony becomes quite clear.  On her deathbed, the memory of a lost love, which has been, suppressed for 60 years resurfaces. The memories are magnified in such a way showing that although she had tried to forget George, her former fiancé, she never actually did.  “Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him.  I want him to know I had my husband just the same and my children and my house like any other woman” (5), are the words Granny speaks to create the irony.  She reminisces about the wedding day and being left standing at the altar. Granny vividly remembers, “What does a woman do when she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for a man and he doesn’t come?” (3) This recollection causes her to start making profound statements about, “Don’t let things get lost” and “it’s bitter to lose things” (3).  Though she never says directly why she has these thoughts, the reader realizes that she has this appreciation because of her loss, which was not marrying George.  Of course, she had a nice life with John, whom she married and had children with, but there was always the thought of what might have been had George been her husband. She thinks, “He never harmed me but in that” (3), a direct reference to being stood up at the altar and that was the greatest harm George could have ever done.  She had tried for so long to forget him, now on her deathbed, she wants to see him, find him, and let him know how she feels.  Granny reflects, “For sixty years she had prayed against remembering him…”  (4).  He had always been there serving as a constant reminder of the past, of things envisioned and dreamed of wasted in a single instant, relegating her to think only what if.

Join now!

        The second irony of the story is the cause of Granny’s greatest jilting, the realization that she had been stood up twice.  This feeling is caused by her perception that in death Christ had not come to meet her to take her to heaven.  She asks God to give her a sign, a sign that death was now and that He would be there.  Now, “For the second time there was no sign” (7).  The irony behind that is that she wanted God to have given her a sign when George had stood her up.  That thought gives the reader ...

This is a preview of the whole essay