The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall Character Development

Character Development in “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” In this short story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter, the story takes place in Granny Weatherall’s bedroom. Granny is sick in bed being visited by her children, Cornelia, Jimmy, and Lydia. In this story, the author develops Granny’s character through her hard life, her marriage and family, and the jilting. One of the ways that Porter develops Granny’s character is through her hard life when Porter explains how Granny’s husband John dies at a very young age, “She used to think of him as a man, but now all of her children were older than their father, and he would be a child beside her if she saw him now” (Porter 190). Granny Weatherall thinks of herself first and foremost as a gritty survivor. Granny prides herself on her strength, mothering skills, and ability to run a farm single-handedly. Porter states, “She had fenced in one hundred acres once, digging the post holes herself . . . . That changed a woman” (Porter 190). Granny turned herself into both mother and father to her children, and took pride in her ability to run a household

Granny marries her children’s father, John who died at a young age, leaving Granny to tend to the farm and children by herself. “Thoughts of rationalizing that she is not too old to be self-sufficient”, (Blake) flood Granny’s thoughts on a daily basis. Granny explains that “In her day she had kept a better house and got more work done” (Porter 190). Porter describes Granny as shamefully short-tempered, especially with her daughter Cornelia, who clearly adores her mother and waits on her hand and foot. Porter states that “The thing that most annoyed Granny was that Cornelia thought she was deaf, dumb, and blind” (Porter 190). It makes Granny want to pack up and move away “where nobody could remind her every minute that she was old” (Porter