The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall By Katherine Ann Porter

In "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter, the reader gets a glimpse of the thoughts of a woman about to die. Lying in her bed eighty-year-old Granny Weatherall drifts in and out of consciousness.
Doctor Harry a cloth on Granny Weatherall forehead telling her "now, now, be a good girl, and we'll have you up in no time", retailing back Granny Weatherall said "that's no way to speak to a woman nearly eighty years old just because she's down. I'd have you respect your elders, young man" (915). From the very beginning of the short story the reader can infer Granny Weatherall is not a typical sweet old lady. Not polite and docile, how some people expected women to be in the old days. Granny Weatherall defied traditional expectations of women.

However, Granny's traditional roles as wife and mother have been crucial to shaping the person she is now.

The reader learns Granny Weatherall has worked hard all her whole life, and frequently tells herself she did a good job. Granny Weatherall is determined to prove that she does not need a man figure to help her. Granny Weatherall was left at the alter and had to stand strong after. “What does a woman do when she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for a man and he doesn’t come” (919)? Granny Weatherall then married a different man who died at a young age, leaving Granny Weatherall to a life as a single mother. Granny Weatherall thinks of events that made her stronger such as digging holes for fence posts, "riding country roads in the winter when women had their babies" (page), taking care of sick animals and sick children. Though Granny Weatherall tries to assure herself that her life has been good other events in her life will say the

opposite.
Yet, Granny Weatherall daughter “Cornelia was dutiful; that was the trouble with her…’So good and dutiful,’ said Granny, ‘that I’d like to spank her’” (915) Granny's main care taker is her daughter Cornelia. Cornelia is playing the typical female role of caregiver. Cornelia seems to fix the description of a traditional woman and how one should act by being "tactful and kind" as well as "dutiful and good" (915). Granny's disapproval of those qualities suggests did not willfully abide by the conventional gender roles.