Reaction Paper 3

Kayla Ross

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Katherine Anne Porter’s The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, is tale that allows the reader to step in the shoes of an elderly women as she reminisces about her life and realizes that her heart has not yet recovered from the many betrayals she has suffered from. Grandma Weatherall is first introduced in her bedroom on her death bed, and readers then make a quick judgment as she snaps at the Doctor and her daughter who is trying to help her, readers questioned “what’s wrong with her”(pg1) but then Grandma Weatherall’s behavior was the justified as readers realized that “can we expect? She’s eighty years old…”. The reader then takes a turn of thought as Porter then introduces the reader to the events that made Weatherall the person she is, through the betrayal and injustices she suffered through loved ones.


Porter introduces the first account of betrayal through symbolism. While Granny Weatherall is in a semi conscious states objects in her room, begin to represent objects and different identities, there were “shelves laid out in dust with rows of jelly glasses and brown jugs and white stone-china jars with blue whirligigs and dust on top of the china pieces”, the dust that Granny Weatherall noticed can be seen as a symbolism for the disorder that took place in her life, that she believed that she swept under the carpet. Porter then introduces one of the moments Weatherall believed that she had in the back of her head, the day “she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for the man who never arrived”. (pg 2) Through the third person Porter, puts emphasis on the fact that the betrayal of her fiance had felt like “the bottom dropped out of the world.”(pg 2) Porter sensory details by allowing the reader to experience the same emotion that Weatherall did as “she was blind and sweating with nothing under her feet and the walls falling away.”(pg 2)the reader then began to pity Grandma Weatherall and understand why she was so bitter.



The second betrayal that was introduced to the reader was the betrayal of her daughter Hapsy who failed to come visit her, Granny is so affected by this betrayal that though the art of flashback she seems to see herself a Hapsy, “the baby on Hapsy’s arm was Hapsy and himself and herself, all at once, and there was no surprise in the meeting.” (pg 3) The reader was able to grasp Granny’s love through these flash backs and made the connection that similar to Granny ex-fiance, Hapsy was also being left once again and was abandoning her mother. Throughout the story Granny asked for Hapsy about a record of five times, through repetition and consistency Porter portrayed Haspy as Granny’s savior.



As Granny Weatherall now is returning back to her reality, Porter reveals the final betrayal by using descriptive writing as Grandma Weatheall “Granny lay 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.” This use of imagery, adds drama to the scene its self, as the reader is wondering what is Granny’s next move as she is slipping closer to her death. , “the blue light from Cornelia’s lampshade drew into a tiny point in the center of her brain,”(3) and then Granny asks God for “a sign,”(3) so she could be assured of an after life but “there was no sign”. The betrayal of God to the reader almost over powers the betrayal of her fiancé.



Katherine Anne Porter’s The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, focuses on how betrayal can affect one’s life almost through the account of an elder women. She described these accounts of betrayal through the art of flashback and brought out these accounts through symbolism and imagery.