Critical Response for The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," by Katherine Anne Porter, isn't just about "an eighty-year-old woman lying in bed, getting groggy and dying". Sure, it's about an eighty-year-old woman who's on her death bed, watching her life flash before her eyes, while her physician, family, and priest gather around to spend the last few precious moments they have with her together, but it's also about a strong, independent woman, who's been hurt, or jilted as they like to put it, in this particular short story. Her flashbacks consist of memories of bad weather, missing bridegrooms, young children, and sick horses and Negroes. We learn, from these flashbacks, how much she has overcome and endured, and how she's put her whole heart into being a mother and wife up until her last breath, when she blew out the candle and rode with her Father in a cart to heaven. Which is the very reason why Porter chose Granny as the narrator of this story, so we could see the story through her eyes, being able to relate and appreciate it better.

First of all, the two things that Granny Weatherall continually repeats are "there's nothing wrong with me" and "that's for tomorrow." She's stubborn and hardworking, but yet she procrastinates. When she felt death come upon her on her bed that day, she wasn't expecting it, we know this because of the repetition of all that she needs to do and that she'll get it done tomorrow. She also mentions that she thought she was going to die once before, when she was back in her sixties. From this near death experience, she somehow became invisible, immortal, in her mind since she survived. Her father supposedly lived to be "one hundred and two years old and drank a noggin of strong hot toddy on his last birthday. He told reporters it was his daily habit, and he owed his long life to it". Granny Weatherall also lived through milk-leg and double pneumonia, so she had no use or belief in doctors or medicine. With Granny narrating this to us, rather than one of her children, we're able to see how strong she is, while her children would probably describe her as old, weak, and fragile.

Secondly, we know that she was Catholic. "Thank God there was a little margin over for peace: then a person could spread out the plan of life and tuck in the edges orderly". She says this when thinking about the good old days when everything would get done right after she put into her mind the idea that she was going to do it. "Without Thee, my God, I could never have done it. Hail, Mary, full of grace". She says this about how strong she was and how she made it through so many obstacles and only the Catholic religion says their Hail Mary. She also has a priest who came to visit her in her final hours, Father Connelly. We also find out about a rosary that she had. "The rosary fell out of her hands and Lydia put it back... Beads wouldn't do, it must be something live". This is mentioned in her final hours when she holds her son, Jimmy's hand. If this were told from someone other than Granny's point of view, we wouldn't know the importance of her holding her son's hand, or even if she still believed in God.

Finally, and most significantly, we find out why Granny is jilted. Though she was a strong woman, she was only strong because of what she had to go through, and the obstacles that came in her way, which she took head on, without having any other option. She describes herself as once being "a young woman with the peaked Spanish comb in her hair and the painted fan". Granny Weatherall was changed from this young woman to a different young woman, a stronger, innocent, young woman, the day her groom, George left her at the altar. "Such a fresh breeze blowing and such a green day with no threats in it. But he had not come, just the same. 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?". But we also learned that she moved on with her life after some time, "I had my husband just the same and my children and my house like any other woman. A good house too and a good husband that I loved and fine children out of him. Better than I hoped for even. Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more... Since the day the wedding cake was not cut, but thrown out and wasted. The whole bottom dropped out of the world, and there she was blind and sweating with nothing under her feet and the walls falling away".

Not only did a man walk out on her on her wedding day without an excuse, but we read hints to a possible loss of a child at a young age with her husband, John. "Something not given back... When this one was born it should have been the last. The last. It should have been born first, for it was the one she had truly wanted. Everything came in good time. Nothing left out, left over. She was strong, in three days she would be as well as ever. Better. A woman needed milk to have her full health... So there was nothing, nothing to worry about any more, except sometimes in the night one of the children screamed in a nightmare, and they both hustled out shaking and hunting for the matches and calling... John get the doctor now, Hapsy's time has come... You'll see Hapsy again. Granny made a long journey outward looking for Hapsy". From this it seems as though Hapsy had died a long time ago, but now that Granny is close to death herself, she seems to think of her more often, and begins to anticipate death so she can see her daughter again.

We also learn of Granny Weatherall's strength and endurance. "It had been a hard pull, but not too much for her. When she thought of all the food she had cooked, and all the clothes she had cut and sewed, and all the gardens she had made... She had fenced in a hundred acres once, digging the post holes herself and clamping the wires with just a Negro boy to help... Riding country roads in the winter when women had their babies... sitting up nights with sick horses and sick negroes and sick children and hardly ever losing one". From this we find out along with other statements, that John, her husband must have died young, because she had to do so much on her own. "Sometimes she wanted to see John again and point to him and say: 'Well, I didn't do so badly, did I?' He couldn't possibly recognize her now".

The last and final time that Granny gets jilted is when she's waiting for God on her deathbed to take her home to heaven; she thinks that he isn't coming for her. "Her body was now only a deeper mass of shadow in an endless darkness and this darkness would curl around the light and swallow it up. God, give me a sign! For the second time there was no sign. Again no bridegroom and the priest in the house. She couldn't remember any other sorrow because this grief wiped them all away. Oh, no, there's nothing more cruel than this, I'll never forgive it". With this Granny seems to take death into her own hands and "stretched herself with a deep breath and blew out the light". This seems to symbolize that she is no longer afraid of dying, because of how she used to light the lamps at night with her children huddled around her for warmth and comfort. The lit lamps were a comfort to her and the children, and they were scared of the dark. So when Granny blew out the candle, she was saying that she wasn't afraid anymore. This proves her strength, fearlessness, and endurance, to be able to face death in the dark, alone. If this wasn't told from Granny's point of view, we wouldn't be able to understand the depth of her jiltedness, or relate to the measures of her pain and suffering that she's had to endure. So with that, I believe that Porter couldn't have told this story any better if she had used another character's point of view.