Essay on "South Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor"

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South

Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, and Alice Walker are all southern women who capture the South in their fiction. Writing in different eras, the authors' stories depict different social climates. However, while these women are of different times, and in Walker's case, of a different race, they use their fiction to analyze and criticize certain attitudes southerners have developed about themselves in "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," "Good Country People," and "Everyday Use."

The protagonist of Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" (1929) is a woman of the Old South. Based on her wanting "to send six bottles of wine to Sister Borgia" (p. 1740), she is probably comfortably middle class, as she can afford to give that much wine as a gift. Before her husband dies, Granny is a homemaker, like most women of her time. She performs traditional tasks such as sewing, tending the garden, and raising her children. However, her husband dies at a young age: "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" (p. 1736). Without a man as the head of the household, it is Granny who has to work. She performs manual labor such as digging holes for fences. She becomes something of a country doctor and midwife: "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" (pp.). Her thoughts point to the way blacks are viewed. Granny would have been working around the time of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She views blacks like livestock, and durin

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g the time the story is published, blacks are not considered equals to whites -- especially in the South.

The South is often portrayed as a place where religion is of great importance, and southerners are stereotyped as being religious. Granny does not realize she is near death, even when the priest comes to offer her communion one last time. A devout Catholic, she is not worried about the state of her soul: "She had her secret comfortable understanding with a few favorite saints who cleared a straight road to God for her" (p. 1738). Her last name is attributive, suggesting that she has "weathered all" the trials and tribulations she has met in her life: being jilted by George at the altar, losing her husband, losing her daughter Hapsy, having to raise her children alone and work. However, by the end of the story, as she realizes she is dying, she asks God for a sign and does not get one: "For the second time there was no sign. Again no bridegroom…She could not remember any other sorrow" (p. 1740). Christ is symbolized as a bridegroom in several places in the Bible, and here she feels she is being jilted again -- this time by God. Porter becomes a Catholic when she enters an unsuccessful marriage. The end of the story and the end of Granny's life seem to embody a disillusionment with Catholicism and religion in general. Porter appears to criticize an intensely southern tradition, that of religion. A person can spend her entire life doing what she is supposed to based upon her spiritual beliefs, and it still will not give her any peace regarding the afterlife.

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Quoted Instructions for "South Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor" Assignment:

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While literary works are products of an author*****s imagination and can, therefore, be set in any place or time, authors tend to write from their personal experience and their own regional roots. Thus, the novels and short stories of *****s who were born and raised in the South, like William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, are likely to be set in that part of the country - in contrast to *****s like Joyce Carol Oates, who lives and teaches in New Jersey, or James Baldwin, who was a voice of the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights movement.

*****¢ In an essay of 1050-1400 words, compare the way any three authors represented in the prose selections of the course anthology are influenced by the region they write about. You may write about any three represented in The American Tradition in Literature - in any week ***** assigned or not. You may also write about authors in *****An Age of Expansion*****

*****¢ You must read the literature itself ***** do not rely on sources. (Your use of quotes will provide evidence of your reading).

*****¢ A good beginning: Read the biographies of the authors for background on their personal lives and regional influences. The region that provides the setting for the story does not have to be in this country. Tim O*****Brien*****s fiction is set in Viet Nam, where he served in the war. Edwidge Danticant is Haitian and Amy Tam writes about her Chinese cultural roots.

*****¢ Consider the following elements of regional influence:

1. Setting (time and place)

2. Characters (Are they prototypical southerners or New Yorkers?) Consider the dialogue and regional dialect, their clothing, or any other characteristics.

3. Descriptions of the region in terms of architecture and nature (the Mississippi River is almost a character in Mark Twain*****s books and stories).

4. The plot line or any other literary elements that are unique to the region.

5. The politics and social milieu of the region

6. You may express your preferences in the conclusion.

*****

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