Due Thursday by the end of class: graphic organizer for the short story "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall."
Friday, vocabulary test from "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall."' class handout / copy below. This consists of 10 matching words and 10 contextual sentences. You must take this test by Friday, if you are on a field trip.
In class today: vocabulary test on "Prufrock" 2...this was the one that was postponed, as folks had an extra day to work on the essay.
First reading of "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Ann Porter. This is attached to a graphic organizer, which is due at the end of class on Thursday. Those on field trips need to plan accordingly. copy below.“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Ann Porter vocabulary
Test Friday, April 11
1. tactful
(adjective)- having or showing a sense of what is fitting and considerate in
dealing with others
2. rummage
(verb or adjective)- to search haphazardly.
3. clammy
(adjective)- unpleasantly cool and humid
4. vanity
(noun)- feelings of excess pride
5. gauzy
(adjective)- so thin as to transmit light
6. agony(noun)- intense feelings of suffering; acute mental
or physical pain
7. absurd (adjective)- inconsistent with reason or logic
or common sense
8. frippery -(noun)- something of little
value or significance (often having to do with clothes)
9. to
dwindle (verb)- become smaller or lose substance
10. nimbus -(noun)- an indication of radiant light drawn
around the head of a saint
“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by
Katherine Ann Porter
Type of work: In this short story, Porter, created
an intimate view into one woman’s deathbed sentiment. She used characterization
through indirect presentation, symbolism, irony, figurative language and an
intriguing third person point of view to carry the reader on this journey with
Granny to her final moment. This story
is told partly with a narrative technique known as “stream of consciousness”.
With this technique, an author portrays a character’s continuing “stream” of
thoughts as they occur, regardless of whether they make sense or whether the
next thought in a sequence relates to the previous thought.
Example of Modernism. This list should look very familiar.
1. implied, rather than
overtly stated themes.
2. fragments (think of
a puzzle with pieces missing; consider the world after World War I).
3. omitting of
expositions (background information about events, settings, characters that
help the reader make sense of the novel, short story or, in this case, the
poem).
4. omitting transitions
(think of a dream, where anything and everything may be juxtaposed without any
seeming logic.)
5. omitting a
resolution (so how does the story play out? who knows? You figure it out for
yourself.
6. lack of explanations
( why did this happen? Again, you figure it out; draw your own conclusions.)
7. sense of
uncertainty, paralysis and ANGST.
Narration
Told in third-person
point of view by a narrator who frequently 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 one moment
and on old memories the next. Her perceptions and recollections favor her
positive view of herself.
Setting
The action takes
place in a bedroom in the home of Granny Weatherall’s daughter Cornelia.
Granny, about eighty, is lying face 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 fiancé abandoned her
on the day they were to be married.
Major characters
Ellen Weatherall: Feisty woman of about eighty who ruminates about
events in her life as she lies dying in the home of her daughter Cornelia.
Because of her illness, she is lucid one moment and disoriented the next. A
painful memory, one she had repressed for sixty years, surfaces and haunts her
at the hour of her death. It is the memory of the day—sixty years
before—when her fiancé, George, jilted her. After she later married a man named
John, she gave birth to four children. John died young but 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: Man who abandoned Granny on the day he was to
marry her.
John: Deceased husband of Granny.
Themes
The usefulness of denial
Responding to loss with
perseverance
Repression
Following in Christ's
Footsteps
The sanctity of the
human heart and the existential loneliness of the human condition
Motif
– waste, order
“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”
By Katherine Anne Porter
(1930)
She flicked her wrist neatly out of Doctor Harry’s pudgy careful
fingers and pulled the sheet up to her chin. The brat ought to be in knee
breeches. Doctoring around the country with spectacles on his nose! “Get
along now. Take your schoolbooks and go. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
Doctor Harry spread a warm paw like a cushion on her forehead where
the forked green vein danced and made her eyelids twitch. “Now, now, be a
good girl, and we’ll have you up in no time.”
“That’s no way to speak to a woman nearly eighty years old just
because she’s down. I’d have you respect your elders, young man.”
“Well, Missy, excuse me.” Doctor Harry patted her cheek. “But I’ve got
to warn you, haven’t I? You’re a marvel, but you must be careful or you’re
going to be good and sorry.”
“Don’t tell me what I’m going to be. I’m on my feet now, morally
speaking. It’s Cornelia. I had to go to bed to get rid of her.”
Her bones felt loose, and floated around in her skin, and Doctor Harry
floated like a balloon around the foot of the bed. He floated and pulled down
his waistcoat, and swung his glasses on a cord. “Well, stay where you are, it
certainly can’t hurt you.”
“Get along and doctor your sick,” said Granny Weatherall. “Leave a
well woman alone. I’ll call for you when I want you…Where were you forty
years ago when I pulled through milk-leg and double pneumonia? You weren’t
even born. Don’t let Cornelia lead you on,” she shouted, because Doctor Harry
appeared to float up to the ceiling and out. “I pay my own bills, and I don’t
throw my money away on nonsense!”
She meant to wave good-by, but it was too much trouble. Her eyes
closed of themselves, it was like a dark curtain drawn around the bed. The
pillow rose and floated under her, pleasant as a hammock in a light wind. She
listened to the leaves rustling outside the window. No, somebody was swishing
newspapers: no, Cornelia and Doctor Harry were whispering together. She
leaped broad awake, thinking they whispered in her ear.
“She was never like this, never like this!” “Well, what can we
expect?” “Yes, eighty years old…”
Well, and what if she was? She still had ears. It was like Cornelia to
whisper around doors. She always kept things secret in such a public way. She
was always being tactful and kind. Cornelia was dutiful; that was the trouble
with her. Dutiful and good: “So good and dutiful,” said Granny, “that I’d
like to spank her.” She saw herself spanking Cornelia and making a fine job
of it.
“What’d you say, mother?”
Granny felt her face tying up in hard knots.
“Can’t a body think, I’d like to know?”
“I thought you might like something.”
“I do. I want a lot of things. First off, go away and don’t whisper.”
She lay and drowsed, hoping in her sleep that the children would keep
out and let her rest a minute. It had been a long day. Not that she was
tired. It was always pleasant to snatch a minute now and then. There was
always so much to be done, let me see: tomorrow.
Tomorrow was far away and there was nothing to trouble about. Things
were finished somehow when the time came; thank God there was always a little
margin over for peace: then a person could spread out the plan of life and
tuck in the edges orderly. It was good to have everything clean and folded
away, with the hair brushes and tonic bottles sitting straight on the white,
embroidered linen: the day started without fuss and the pantry shelves laid
out with rows of jelly glasses and brown jugs and white stone-china jars with
blue whirligigs and words painted on them: coffee, tea, sugar, ginger,
cinnamon, allspice: and the bronze clock with the lion on top nicely dusted
off. The dust that lion could collect in twenty-four hours! The box in the attic
with all those letters tied up, well, she’d have to go through that tomorrow.
All those letters – George’s letters and John’s letters and her letters to
them both – lying around for the children to find afterwards made her uneasy.
Yes, that would be tomorrow’s business. No use to let them know how silly she
had been once.
While she was rummaging around she found death in her mind and it felt
clammy and unfamiliar. She had spent so much time preparing for death there
was no need for bringing it up again. Let it take care of itself for now.
When she was sixty she had felt very old, finished, and went around making
farewell trips to see her children and grandchildren, with a secret in her
mind: This was the very last of your mother, children! Then she made her will
and came down with a long fever. That was all just a notion like a lot of
other things, but it was lucky too, for she had once and for all got over the
idea of dying for a long time. Now she couldn’t be worried. She hoped she had
better sense now. Her father had lived to be one hundred and two years old
and had drunk a noggin of strong hot toddy on his last birthday. He told the
reporters it was his daily habit, and he owed his long life to that. He had
made quite a scandal and was very pleased about it. She believed she’d just
plague Cornelia a little.
“Cornelia! Cornelia!” No footsteps, but a sudden hand on her cheek.
“Bless you, where have you been?”
“Here, Mother.”
“Well, Cornelia, I want a noggin of hot toddy.”
“Are you cold, darling?”
“I’m chilly, Cornelia.” Lying in bed stops the circulation. I must
have told you a thousand times.”
Well, she could just hear Cornelia telling her husband that Mother was
getting a little childish and they’d have to humor her. The thing that most
annoyed her was that Cornelia thought
she was deaf, dumb, and blind. Little hasty glances and tiny gestures tossed
around here and over her head saying, “Don’t cross her, let her have her way,
she’s eighty years old,” and she sitting there as if she lived in a thin
glass cage. Sometimes granny almost 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, wait, Cornelia, till your own children whisper behind your back!
In her day she had kept a better house and had got more work done. She
wasn’t too old yet for Lydia to be driving eighty miles for advice when one
of the children jumped the track, and Jimmy still dropped in and talked
things over: “Now, Mammy, you’ve a good business head, I want to know what
you think of this?…” Old. Cornelia couldn’t change the furniture around
without asking . Little things, little things! They had been so sweet when
they were little. Granny wished the old days were back again with the
children young and everything to be done over. 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 –
well, the children showed it. There they were, made out of her, and they
couldn’t get away from that. Sometimes she wanted to see John again and point
to them and say, Well, I didn’t do so badly, did I? But that would have to
wait. That was for tomorrow. She used to think of him as a man, but now all
the children were older than their father, and he would be a child beside her
if she saw him now. It seemed strange and there was something wrong in the
idea. Why, he couldn’t possibly recognize her. She had fenced in a hundred
acres once, digging the post holes herself and clamping the wires with just a
negro boy to help. That changed a woman. John would be looking for a young
woman with a peaked Spanish comb in her hair and the painted fan. Digging
post holes changed a woman. Riding country roads in the winter when women had
their babies was another thing:
sitting up nights with sick horses and sick negroes and sick children and hardly ever losing
one. John, I hardly ever lost one of them! John would see that in a minute,
that would be something he could understand, she wouldn’t have to explain
anything!
It made her feel like rolling up her sleeves and putting the whole
place to rights again. No matter if Cornelia was determined to be everywhere
at once, there were a great many things left undone on this place. She would
start tomorrow and do them. It was good to be strong enough for everything,
even if all you made melted and changed and slipped under your hands, so that
by the time you finished you almost forgot what you were working for. What
was it I set out to do? She asked herself intently, but she could not
remember. 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 it
would be at the near edge of the orchard, and then it was time to go in and
light the lamps. Come in, children, don’t stay out in the night air.
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 didn’t have to
be scared and hang on to mother any more. 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.
I want you to pick all the fruit this year and see nothing is wasted.
There’s always someone who can use it. Don’t let good things rot for want of
using. You waste life when you waste good food. Don’t let things get lost.
It’s bitter to lose things. Now, don’t let me get to thinking, not when I’m
tired and taking a little nap before supper….
The pillow rose about her shoulders and pressed against her heart and
the memory was being squeezed out of it: oh, push down the pillow, somebody:
it would smother her if she tried to hold it. 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? She tried to remember. No, I swear he
never harmed me but in that. He never harmed me but in that…and what if he
did? There was the day, the day, but a whirl of dark smoke rose and covered it,
crept up and over into the bright field where everything was planted so
carefully in orderly rows. That was hell, she knew hell when she saw it. For
sixty 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 one and
the thought of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and crept in her
head when she had just got rid of Doctor Harry and was trying to rest a
minute. Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind.
Don’t let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get
jilted. You were kilted, weren’t you? Then stand up to it. Her eyelids
wavered and let in streamers of blue-gray light like tissue paper over her
eyes. She must get up and pull the shades down or she’d never sleep. She was
in bed again and the shades were not down. How could that happen? Better turn
over, hide from the light, sleeping in the light gave you nightmares.
“Mother, how do you feel now?” and a
stinging wetness on her forehead. But I don’t like having my face washed in
cold water!
Hapsy? George? Lydia? Jimmy? No, Cornelia and her features were
swollen and full of little puddles. “They’re coming, darling, they’ll all be
here soon.” Go wash your face, child, you look funny.
Instead of obeying, Cornelia knelt down and put her head on the
pillow. She seemed to be talking but there was no sound. “Well, are you
tongue-tied? Whose birthday is it? Are you going to give a party?”
Cornelia’s mouth moved urgently in strange shapes. “Don’t do that, you
bother me, daughter.”
“Oh no, Mother. Oh, no…”
Nonsense. It was strange about
children. They disputed your every word. “No what, Cornelia?”
“Here’s Doctor Harry.”
“I won’t see that boy again. He left just five minutes ago.”
“That was this morning, Mother. It’s night now. Here’s the nurse.”
“This is Doctor Harry, Mrs. Weatherall. I never saw you look so young
and happy!”
“Ah, I’ll never be young again – but I’d be happy if they’d let me lie
in peace and get rested.”
She thought she spoke up loudly, but no one answered. A warm weight on
her forehead, a warm bracelet on her wrist, and a breeze went on whispering,
trying to tell her something. A shuffle of leaves in the everlasting hand of
God, He blew on them and they danced and rattled. “Mother, don’t mind, we’re
going to give you a little hypodermic.” “Look here, daughter, how do ants get
in this bed? I saw sugar ants yesterday.” Did you send for Hapsy too?
It was Hapsy she really wanted. She had to go a long way back through
a great many rooms to find Hapsy standing with a baby on her arm. She seemed
to herself to be Hapsy also, and the baby on Hapsy’s arm was Hapsy and
himself and herself, all at once, and there was no surprise in the meeting.
Then Hapsy melted from within and turned flimsy as gray gauze and the baby
was a gauzy shadow, and Hapsy came up close and said, “I thought you’d never
come,” and looked at her very searchingly and said, “You haven’t changed a
bit!” They leaned forward to kiss, when Cornelia began whispering from a long
way off, “Oh, is there anything you want to tell me? Is there anything I can
do for you?”
Yes, she had changed her mind after sixty years and she would like to
see George. I want you to find George. 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. A good house too and a good 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 besides the house and the man and the children. Oh,
surely they were not all? What was it? Something not given back… Her breath
crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening shape with
cutting edges; it bored up into her head, and the agony was unbelievable:
Yes, John, get the Doctor now, no more talk, the time has come.
When this one was born it should be 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 in her to have her full
health.
“Mother, do you hear me?”
“I’ve been telling you – “
“Mother, Father Connolly’s here.”
“I went to Holy Communion only last week. Tell him I’m not so sinful
as all that.”
“Father just wants to speak with you.”
He could speak as much as he pleased. It was like him to drop in and
inquire about her soul as if it were a teething baby, and then stay on for a
cup of tea and a round of cards and gossip. He always had a funny story of
some sort, usually about an Irishman who made his little mistakes and
confessed them, and the point lay in some absurd thing he would blurt out in
the confessional showing his struggles between native piety and original sin.
Granny felt easy about her soul. Cornelia, where are your manners? Give
Father Connolly a chair. She had her secret comfortable understanding with a
few favorite saints who cleared a straight road to God for her. All as surely
signed and sealed as the papers for the new forty acres. Forever…heirs and
assigns forever. Since the day the wedding cake was not cut, but thrown out
and wasted. The whole bottom of the world dropped out, and there she was
blind and sweating with nothing under her feet and the walls falling away.
His hand had caught her under the breast, she had not fallen, there was the
freshly polished floor with the green rug on it, just as before. He had
cursed like a sailor’s parrot and said, “I’ll kill him for you.” Don’t lay a
hand on him, for my sake leave something to God. “Now, Ellen, you must
believe what I tell you….”
So there was nothing, nothing to worry about anymore, except sometimes
in the night one of the children screamed in a nightmare, and they both
hustled out and hunting for the matches and calling, “There, wait a minute,
here we are!” John, get the doctor now, Hapsy’s time has come. But there was
Hapsy standing by the bed in a white cap. “Cornelia, tell Hapsy to take off
her cap. I can’t see her plain.”
Her eyes opened very wide and the room stood out like a picture she
had seen somewhere. Dark colors with the shadows rising towards the ceiling
in long angles. The tall black dresser gleamed with nothing on it but John’s
picture, enlarged from a little one, with John’s eyes very black when they
should have been blue. You never saw him, so how do you know how he looked?
But the man insisted the copy was perfect, it was very rich and handsome. For
a picture, yes, but it’s not my husband. The table by the bed had a linen
cover and a candle and a crucifix. The light was blue from Cornelia’s silk lampshades.
No sort of light at all, just frippery. You had to live forty years with
kerosene lamps to appreciate honest electricity. She felt very strong and she
saw Doctor Harry with a rosy nimbus around him.
“You look like a saint, Doctor Harry, and I vow that’s as near as
you’ll ever come to it.”
“She’s saying something.”
“I heard you Cornelia. What’s all this carrying on?”
“Father Connolly’s saying – “
Cornelia’s voice staggered and jumped like a cart in a bad road. It
rounded corners and turned back again and arrived nowhere. Granny stepped up
in the cart very lightly and reached for the reins, but a man sat beside her
and she knew him by his hands, driving the cart. She did not look in his
face, for she knew without seeing, but looked instead down the road where the
trees leaned over and bowed to each other and a thousand birds were singing a
Mass. She felt like singing too, but she put her hand in the bosom of her
dress and pulled out a rosary, and Father Connolly murmured Latin in a very solemn
voice and tickled her feet. My God, will you stop that nonsense? I’m a
married woman. What if he did run away and leave me to face the priest by
myself? I found another a whole world better. I wouldn’t have exchanged my
husband for anybody except St. Michael himself, and you may tell him that for
me with a thank you in the bargain.
Light flashed on her closed eyelids, and a deep roaring shook her.
Cornelia, is that lightning? I hear thunder. There’s going to be a storm.
Close all the windows. Call the children in… “Mother, here we are, all of
us.” “Is that you Hapsy?” “Oh, no, I’m Lydia We drove as fast as we could.”
Their faces drifted above her, drifted away. The rosary fell out of her hands
and Lydia put it back. Jimmy tried to help, their hands fumbled together, and
granny closed two fingers around Jimmy’s thumb. Beads wouldn’t do, it must be
something alive. She was so amazed her thoughts ran round and round. So, my
dear Lord, this is my death and I wasn’t even thinking about it. My children
have come to see me die. But I can’t, it’s not time. Oh, I always hated
surprises. I wanted to give Cornelia the amethyst set – Cornelia, you’re to
have the amethyst set, but Hapsy’s to wear it when she wants, and, Doctor
Harry, do shut up. Nobody sent for you. Oh, my dear Lord, do wait a minute. I
meant to do something about the Forty Acres, Jimmy doesn’t need it and Lydia
will later on, with that worthless husband of hers. I meant to finish the
alter cloth and send six bottles of wine to Sister Borgia for her dyspepsia.
I want to send six bottles of wine to Sister Borgia, Father Connolly, now
don’t let me forget.
Cornelia’s voice made short turns and tilted over and crashed. “Oh,
mother, oh, mother, oh, mother….”
“I’m not going, Cornelia. I’m taken by surprise. I can’t go.”
You’ll see Hapsy again. What bothered her? “I thought you’d never
come.” Granny made a long journey outward, looking for Hapsy. What if I don’t
find her? What then? Her heart sank down and down, there was no bottom to
death, she couldn’t come to the end of it. The blue light from Cornelia’s
lampshade drew into a tiny point in the center of her brain, it flickered and
winked like an eye, quietly it fluttered and dwindled. Granny laid curled down
within herself, amazed and watchful, staring at the point of light that was
herself; 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 a
sign!
For a second time 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 away. Oh, no, there’s nothing more cruel than this – I’ll never forgive
it. She stretched herself with a deep breath and blew out the light.
|
We are looking at the modernist short
story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” through the lens of modernism and as
a review of literary elements. Please respond exactly to the following
questions as requested.
1.Describe the relationship between
Granny and Doctor Harry, using specific text to explain your reasoning.
2. How does the description of
Granny’s bones connect to the technique of stream of consciousness?
3. Based upon this paragraph only,
give three adjectives that describe Granny.
4. Why would Cornelia “whisper around
doors?”
5. What is Granny’s attitude toward
time? To what themes does this connect? Respond this this in a well-written
sentence, incorporating textual evidence.
6. Give two examples that express
Granny’s attitude toward death.
7.
List five examples that demonstrate Granny’s determination and resiliency.
(use text)
8. Write out the words that best exemplify the technique of stream of
consciousness and hence Granny’s fading.
9. What is Granny’s attitude towards
religion? Support your statement with text.
10. What was Granny’s personal hell?
Use text.
11. What do Granny’s children realize
that she does not? Although this is implied (modernism!), how in the text is
this exactly indicated? Use text.
12. Granny is confused, floating from
one memory to another. Hazard a guess as to who Hapsy might be and what
happened to her.
13. Why is Father Connolly there? What
is Granny’s attitude towards the priest? Support your response with text.
14. What is implied when Granny notes
John’s eyes [were] very black, when they should have been blue?
15. What physically is happening to
Granny as she dies and what does she feel she must do? Support with text.
16.Name the two jiltings that occurred
in the story.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment