Literary Analysis Of The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall

Katherine Anne Porter’s tragic tale “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” documents a woman pondering her past experiences in her last day of life. The short story contains elements of theme that emphasize the author’s main idea — loneliness is an innate part of the human condition as everyone copes with his or her problems alone. Granny Weatherall (first name Ellen) lays on her deathbed and is irritated by her daughter Cornelia and physician Doctor Harry for treating her like a helpless old lady. It bothers her that her children act as if she is senile when they still rely on her, “Old. Cornelia couldn’t change the furniture around without asking. Little things, little things!”. Secretly sensing her time is near, she looks back at the life she has had — being left at the altar more than sixty years ago by her first fiancé George, losing her first child Hapsy, and raising a family alone after her husband John passed away. Weatherall convinces herself being jilted is not as horrible as it seems, saying “Don’t let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get jilted,” and wishes George could see the amazing life she had without him. She reminisces about Hapsy, her daughter who passed away in childhood that she deeply misses and compares the rest of her children to. She envisions their touching reunion with a tenderness she does not give her other children, 'Hapsy came up close and said, ‘I thought you’d never come,’ and looked at her searchingly and said, ‘You haven’t changed a bit!’”. As her children gather around to say their last goodbyes, Granny Weatherall feels like she has come to terms with her life, is at peace for a moment, then it falters as she increasingly feels flustered when she is slipping away. She calls out to God for reassurance, but she senses no response and is jilted before she passes away just as she was at the altar decades ago. The elements of point of view, character, and symbolism that exist in the story help highlight Porter’s main theme that everybody ultimately undergoes his or her experiences alone.

One element Porter uses is point of view and she writes the story in third person limited point of view through Granny Weatherall’s eyes. Although being left at the altar was a very dark moment for Weatherall, she handled it internally and did not tell her children or her late husband John about the occurrence. She reminds herself to dispose of the old letters to George before she dies so that her children would not know “how silly [she] had once been”. Only she knows it happened and no one except the reader is able to see how much it affected her. Granny Weatherall’s children – George, Lydia, Jimmy and Cornelia – are not aware of how little their mother thinks of them and has always been longing for her firstborn. Weatherall is constantly suspicious of Cornelia, saying “It was like Cornelia to whisper around doors. She always kept things secret in such a public way”. While Weatherall thought about Hapsy, the author shows us her true feelings, “It was Hapsy she really wanted”. As one can see, it is through Porter’s usage of the limited point of view from Weatherall’s perspective that the audience is aware of Granny Weatherall’s thoughts on her deathbed, her losses and regrets, her deepest feelings and emotions which are unknown to everyone else in her life, strengthening the theme.

Another aspect of element the author utilizes is character. Granny Weatherall is the main character as well as the sole non-flat character in the short story and the only one given great detail. Other characters — Doctor Harry, Father Connolly, Cornelia, and the rest of her children — are flat characters. Some projections of characters also exist in Granny Weatherall’s mind how she remembers them, like Hapsy, John, and George. Weatherall is a strong-minded woman and prides herself on raising four children alone after her husband died, taking on the woman’s and man’s role in the family by running the household and doing manual labor. She is an independent woman who had to put the struggles aside in order to carry through with her responsibilities and life. This pushing aside of her psyche caused Weatherall to be in denial about many aspects of her life. She is in denial about her physical condition, telling the doctor to “Leave a well woman alone”. Weatherall is unaware that Father Connolly, the priest who visits her, is performing her last rites and that her children are gathered there to see her one last time. When he touches her while performing the blessing she thinks, “My God, will you stop that nonsense? I’m a married woman. I wouldn’t have exchanged my husband for St. Michael himself”. She is also in denial about the unloving manner she has treated her children, “You bother me, daughter… it was strange about children. They disputed your every word”. Weatherall is also in denial when she downplays how much the jilting that occured in her youth hurt her, even in her last moments she could not forget about George and had something to prove to him, “I want you to find George… tell him I forgot him… I was given back everything he took away and more”. Granny Weatherall had to push her heartbreaks aside so she never had the chance to truly make peace with them, and with herself. She dealt with her issues on her own because she did not want to be vulnerable, could not be slowed down in life, and because she was the only person she could count on.

Porter scatters symbolism throughout the short story as well. Religious symbols appear sporadically in the story- a rosary, the priest, and the altar on her fireplace mantle with her husband John’s picture on it. Religion symbolizes a source of peace for many, but for Weatherall the religious symbols do not bring solace. The rosary she clutches in her hands falls to the floor as she would rather hold on to her son Jimmy’s hands in her last breaths, “Their hands fumbled together, and Granny closed two fingers around Jimmy’s thumb”. The picture of John on the altar possesses a foreboding darkness as she states “John’s eyes [were] very black when they should have been blue” which represent there is something darker between her and John’s relationship, and she fears him more than she loves him. The uncut wedding cake she remembers is a symbol of the marriage and union of young Ellen and George, but it was uncut and tossed away showing that her dreams of marrying George and her innocence were also tossed away. The blue colored light Weatherwall watches on the walls symbolizes the melancholy of life and the light itself symbolizes her life. As she nears death, the light slowly flickers less and less as Granny Weatherall inches closer to death, and it extinguishes itself with her last breath, “The blue light from Cornelia’s lampshade drew to a tiny point… it flickered and winked… quietly it fluttered and dwindled”. When she calls out to God to guide her to the other side, she is left with silence in her last dying breaths. The symbols Porter incorporates represent the isolation of Granny Weatherall’s life, that she actually dreads seeing her husband again even though she claims she loves him, and when God does not answer her call, cementing the theme of how we all live and die alone.

Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” is an interesting and cathartic view of the human experience. The audience can sympathize with Granny Weatherall’s demons lurking in her mind that she never had the chance to resolve. Porter’s usage of elements in developing the idea illustrate the essence of theme she was trying to portray. The elements of point of view, character, and symbolism bring the theme to the reader’s understanding in this short story.