"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall".

             Katherine Anne Porter"s "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" (reprinted in Thomas R. Arp, Perrine"s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 7th ed. [Fort Worth: Harcourt, 1998] 174) is a story of self-realization, regret, and irony. On her deathbed, a memory of sixty years ago, Granny (Ellen) Weatherall could no longer repress the day she was jilted by her husband-to-be. Voices and visions, imagined and real, linger and emerge throughout the story as this bold woman lives out her final moments. The name Weatherall is a suitable name for Granny as she has weathered many crises and hardships.

             In the beginning of the story, Granny feels only a sense of being tired. She does not realize that she is dying. Long ago, when Granny was sixty, she put to rest the thought of dying. Being very ill, she goes through the actions of saying good-bye and making out a will. Granny does not die from the illness; she sees the whole thing as just a concept like other things in life. From this she gets over her fear of dying once and for all. This segment in her life contributes to her not realizing or her denying the fact that she, now eighty years old, is really dying.

             Ellen"s grasp of reality starts to slip away as she begins to relive her past. Sixty years prior, her husband-to-be, George, jilted her at the altar. Spending the last sixty years repressing the memory and how she felt that day, she remembers how her faith had been shattered when the man she had once loved crushed her world. She lives her life as much to perfection as she possibly can in the sense of orderliness, from the way she keeps the house in an orderly fashion to the perfect rows in the garden. She does not waste food, nor does she allow anyone else to waste food. Subconsciously, she remembers the wasted wedding cake and sees wasting good food as wasting life. Granny expects certain results in exchange for the behavior she has presented.