Introduction
Attitudes to life and death vary depending on time, culture, and society. History knows many transformations in how people saw old age, illness, and dying. These perspectives find their reflections in a culture’s products. Therefore, analyzing the literature of a certain historical period of a particular country allows a careful researcher to reconstruct attitudes towards death. The short story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter, published in 1930, can be considered a good example. The main character, Granny Weatherall, illustrates the denial of death that can be seen as characteristic of American society at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century.
Main body
It might be useful to start by discussing Granny’s attitude towards her illness. As the story begins, Granny Weatherall, who is almost eighty years old, lies in bed being attended by Doctor Harry (Porter 80). However, she denies that she needs any medical assistance. She pulls her wrist out of the doctor’s hands and says that he must take his “schoolbooks and go” as “there is nothing wrong” with her (Porter 80). Granny says that she would call for the doctor when she needs one; meanwhile, he can attend to “[his] sick” (Porter 80). It illustrates her contempt towards illness – Granny seems to consider accepting the fact that she is unwell as admitting weakness.
This attitude corresponds well with the cultural beliefs of industrial America of the late 19th – the beginning of the 20th century. People of Granny’s social class, including young widows, had to work hard to support their families (Bradbury 151). Admitting weakness was not acceptable – nobody would do their job and raise their children. While ill-health in women had become, to a certain extent, fashionable, there was also a great deal of disrespect towards this trend (Wood 27-28). Granny takes pride in her strength, in how she has survived through all the hardships she has encountered: “it had been a hard pull, but not too much for her” (Porter 83). She believes that she had done a good job raising her children (Porter 83). Therefore, admitting her illness equals damaging her image of herself. Her disrespect towards weakness can also be seen in how she fondly recalls her father drinking “strong hot toddy” on his 102nd birthday (Porter 82). Thus, she adores stubbornness as opposed to showing vulnerability.
In addition to denying her illness, Granny Weatherall also does not seem to be able to come to terms with death. At that time, when medicine was not as developed as these days, life expectancy was shorter. The attitude towards older people was based on the assumption that their active participation in life was over. When Granny was sixty, she felt that she was “finished” and “went around making farewell trips” (Porter 82). Then, she spent some time lying with a fever (Porter 82). However, Granny did not die – she became even more persistent in her desire to live. It is interesting to note that despite her “farewell trips”, she has never actually finished all the things she had to do, such as burning her letters and making the necessary arrangements regarding her property.
This illustrates a contradiction between two conflicting cultural notions. On the one hand, it is a universal idea that old people must prepare for death. This belief was widespread before the modern era that emphasizes active aging. It was persistent in industrial America, where death in a household was common (Husband and Loughlin 145). On the other hand, some sociologists suggest that denial of death was characteristic of American society. For instance, a French historian Phillipe Ariès, in his famous book, claims that devotion to embalming, widespread in America at the end of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th century (the presumed period of Granny’s life), indicates a “refusal to accept death” (Ariès 98-99). Another researcher writes that, at that time, death was withdrawn from communication, estranged from life (Jackson 298). It might be the reason why while in the view of her old age, Granny makes her “farewell trips”, she does not prepare herself for death.
It seems that death is an abstract idea for her, and she never really beliefs that it would finally come. Lying in bed, she thinks about it, but it feels “clammy and unfamiliar” (Porter 82). Granny has always been so concentrated on carrying on, working, surviving, raising children, that the idea of this all coming to an end, of her coming to an end, seems obscure despite her once already preparing to die. Even now, lying in bed and dying, she still prefers to be active – roll up her sleeves and put “the whole place to rights again” (Porter 83). It correlates with the fact that, in industrial America, hard work was praised while idleness was considered to be “a disgrace” (Rodgers 11). Despite the weakness of her body, Granny believes that tomorrow she would get up and do all the things she needs to do.
The way Granny lived explains her attitude to death. She loved a man, and he left her – and she had to survive through it. Her husband, John, died young, and she had to raise their children on her own. This also illustrates a common situation for the period: many people died suddenly while still young (Husband and Loughlin 146). Granny had no time to stop and think or examine her feelings. For her busy mind, death – as the absence of action – seems strange. Dying makes her confront things she does not want to face, such as the fact that she still loves the man who left her on their wedding day. Accepting death is hard for people such as Granny, who avoid looking inward because it requires confronting such hard truths about their life.
Moreover, Granny’s inability to welcome death might indicate a subconscious fear. Husband and Loughlin claim that, in industrial America, it became more common to be afraid of dying due to growing secularism (146). Strong links between death and religion became more superficial (which is perfectly illustrated by the fact that seeing a priest beside her bed, Granny remembers his jokes more than his sermons). Granny mentions that she recently went to Holy Communion, but she does not seem to find any solace in God. On the contrary, she is afraid of death, saying to her daughter that she is “taken by surprise” and “can’t go” (Porter 88). It perfectly illustrates her denial and fear of death.
Conclusion
To conclude, illness and death for Granny Weatherall are associated with many things that contradict her image of self, her attitude to life, and social notions widespread at that time. It means weakness, idleness, reflecting on one’s life and experiences, and accepting them. It may also cause fear because the unwavering faith in life after death was less persistent. This explains why Granny Weatherall until her last moment cannot accept death.
Works Cited
Ariès, Philippe. Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present. Translated by Patricia M. Ranum, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.
Bradbury, Bettina. “Surviving as a Widow in 19th-Century Montreal.” Urban History Review, vol. 17, no. 3, 1989, pp. 148–160.
Husband, Julie, and Loughlin, Jim. Daily Life in the Industrial United States, 1870-1900. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004.
Jackson, Charles O. “American Attitudes to Death.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, 1977, pp. 297–312.
Porter, Katherine A. Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories and Essays. The Library of America, 2008.
Rodgers, Daniel T. The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850-1920. University of Chicago Press, 2014.
Wood, Ann D. “‘The Fashionable Diseases’: Women’s Complaints and Their Treatment in Nineteenth-Century America.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 4, no. 1, 1973, pp. 25–52.