"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by American writer Katherine Anne Porter (1890 - 1980) was first published in Porter's 1930 collection Flowering Judas and Other Stories. It later appeared in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it has been widely anthologized.

The story takes place at Granny Weatherall's deathbed, where she finds herself increasingly annoyed by the way her daughter and the doctor treat her as if she's invisible.


It's as if her advanced age, ironically, makes them view her as a child. She, in turn, views them as children, perhaps in order to dismiss their concerns about her health and to deny her impending death.

Resentment of Youth

Granny thinks of Dr. Harry as a child. His fingers are "pudgy" -- a word often used in reference to babies and children. She thinks, "The brat ought to be in knee britches." And when she wants to dismiss him, she insults him by saying, "Get along now, take your schoolbooks and go."

Her attitude toward him may be a defense against acknowledging her own inevitable death. If Dr. Harry is nothing but a child, then perhaps she doesn't need to take his concerns about her health seriously.

After all, Granny has been surviving illnesses since before Dr. Harry was born. She asks him,

"Where were you forty years ago when I pulled through milk-leg and double pneumonia? You weren't even born."

But her unwillingness to see Dr. Harry as an adult might also arise because of his unwillingness to treat her as an adult.

Condescension

Dr. Harry, for his part, can be quite condescending toward Granny. He tells her to "be a good girl" and refers to her as "Missy." These are very dismissive, child-like terms.

He and Cornelia whisper constantly. A reader can certainly forgive them, knowing they must be very concerned about Granny. But Granny is insulted at the way they act as if she is "deaf, dumb, and blind." The problem isn't just that they're secretive, it's also that they don't try very hard at being secretive, as if she's too old or stupid to notice.

It may seem ironic that Granny resents how "tactful and kind" and "dutiful and good" Cornelia is. But her objection is that Cornelia doesn't engage her as an adult. Cornelia simply treats her as if she's an irrational child who must be humored.

As Granny draws nearer to death, Dr. Harry attempts to flatter her by saying, "I never saw you look so young and happy!" His comments assume that youth and happiness are linked, which is a connection that Granny has been rejecting all along.

Granny finds the priest's treatment no better. She feels he drops in to "inquire about her soul as if it were a teething baby." He, like the other adults around her, treats her like an infant and fails to take her seriously.

Blurring of Time

The characters in "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" repeatedly infantilize each other, sometimes in an effort to take care of each other and other times in an attempt to neutralize each other.

Yet by treating age as a fixed state, they may be missing the point. After all, everyone old was once young, and everyone young continues to age until death.

As Granny draws closer to death and becomes more and more delirious, time and age become more and more fluid in her mind.

Granny knows that everyone who insults her now will one day be similarly insulted in their own old age. "Wait, wait, Cornelia," Granny thinks, "till your own children whisper behind your back."

She thinks of her beloved husband, John, as her peer. But he died when he was younger than his children's current age. Porter writes:

"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."

The lines of age become particularly blurry when Granny imagines reuniting with her daughter Hapsy, who died as a child. Granny goes "a long way back through a great many rooms to find Hapsy standing with a baby on her arm."

In Granny's mind, she and Hapsy are simultaneously the same person, and so is the baby being held. Their ages and relationships seem entirely intertwined and continually changing.

Granny seems to be approaching death as Hapsy says, "I thought you'd never come." Hapsy was once the babe in Granny's arms, and she continues to be Granny's daughter. Yet she has also preceded her mother into death and seems prepared to guide and care for Granny as she is "born" into the afterlife.