A Companion to the American Short Story
Page 58
versions of the story is spoken by the Indian who drives the narrator - Porter away from
the pulque hacienda and urges her to return in ten days “ when the green corn will
be ready, and … there will be enough to eat again! ” Here Porter alludes to the Aztec
festival of Xilonen, during which the eating of new corn was initiated after a maiden
representing the Goddess of Young Corn was sacrifi ced. 11 Instead of the strictly con-
trolled Aztec ritual in which all participated solemnly, the sacrifi ce has been trans-
muted into a domestic murder with implied incest and/or homosexuality. The
executioner is not an offi cial priest but rather a young Indian who is the victim ’ s
brother. The nobility do not share with the poor their feast, but rather remain aloof.
The drinking of pulque is not regulated and restricted to the elders as a privilege of
old age, but rather is encouraged in all in order to suppress the hunger of the under-
class both for food and for freedom.
Completed in January 1934, “ That Tree, ” Porter ’ s last overtly Mexican story was
published in July 1934 in Virginia Quarterly Review . She made signifi cant revisions to
it for the October 1935 publication of Flowering Judas and Other Stories , a revised
edition of the fi rst collection expanded from six to ten stories. Porter probably met
novelist and journalist Carleton Beals, the model for the central fi gure of the story,
in Mexico City in 1923. Beals had come to Mexico in the summer of 1918 and by
1923 had taught school, written and published poetry, spent two years in Europe,
and written and gotten accepted for publication books on Fascism and Mexico. By
1935, he was well known for his articles and books on Latin America.
An “ important journalist, an authority on Latin - American revolutions and a best
seller ” ( Collected Stories 66) is the central fi gure. He repeats, as a dramatic monologue,
the highlights of his life from about 1917 to 1930 to a shadowy listener who is his
guest for at least four rounds of drinks over the course of an evening. Although the
journalist may be intended as a caricature of Carleton Beals, it suggests a skillful self -
portrait of Porter in 1935 , an American artist who had come to realize that a regulated
life and hard work were as essential to literary success as to ordinary middle - class
comfort. In “ That Tree, ” Porter implies that adherence to the cult of “ Sacred Art ”
was no guarantee of success and often proved to offer fraudulent enticements. Where
in “ Hacienda, ” Porter satirized artists who strove for material success, in “ That Tree ” ,
there is something as tawdry about failing to sell out as there is in selling out. The
Katherine Anne Porter
263
distaste for or disgust with Mexico that had touched “ Hacienda ” is pervasive here.
Written and then revised after more than three years of residence in Europe, the story
could be set in any country where expatriate Americans search for romantic adventure
and art evolves into self - seeking careerism.
The heart of Porter ’ s canon and arguably her best work are the eleven stories and
two short novels set in the South, that she characterized in her essay “ ‘ Noon Wine ’ :
The Sources ” as “ stories of my own place, my South, ” “ the native land of my heart ”
( Collected Essays 470). When she turned away from her “ familiar country ” and the
Mexican subjects that she had claimed to be truly her own, Porter began to focus on
her own personal and American experiences as a source of fi ction. The results of her
efforts constitute a statement about her country and her time. She fi rst attempted to
do this in “ Holiday, ” a story created in late 1924 about the time of “ Virgin Violeta ”
but not published until 1960 ( Atlantic Monthly , December 1960 ). Porter ’ s withdrawal
from New York City to the Connecticut countryside in late 1924 in order to escape
her personal problems apparently precipitated this meditation on the time when she,
like the story ’ s narrator, “ was too young for some of the troubles [she] was having ”
( Collected Stories 407) – her Spring 1913 withdrawal to a farm outside Houston to
recover from gynecological surgery and to contemplate her unhappy fi rst marriage.
When “ Holiday ” was drafted in 1924, Porter was pregnant and emotionally vulner-
able as a result of a broken love affair. The “ holiday ” of the title refers not only to the
narrator ’ s holiday from her troubles but also the holiday from household drudgery
the disabled Muller daughter Ottilie takes at the conclusion of the story. Although
the narrator is the central fi gure in the story, Ottilie functions as her double or sur-
rogate. “ Holiday ” shares with “ Virgin Violeta ” an exploration of the roles and experi-
ences of women and a concern for an abused or threatened young woman. The story
depicts the archetypal events in the life of a woman: birth, marriage, and death. The
depiction of the Muller women creates a composite view of traditional women ’ s roles
in the early twentieth century, when such roles were being challenged and repudiated
by Porter and her New York women friends. The most salient aspect of women ’ s work
depicted in “ Holiday ” is the sheer hard work and drudgery. However, more signifi cant
is the story ’ s examination of women who, by choice or circumstance, are outside
society ’ s defi ned patterns: the narrator, by virtue of her self - awareness and intellect,
and the maimed Ottilie. The narrator and Ottilie are “ both equally the fools of life,
equally fellow fugitives from death
”
(
Collected Stories
435) who, because of their
freakishness, cannot or will not fulfi ll the traditional roles of women.
The central concern of “ Holiday ” is death: its inevitability and the quite natural
human fear of it. In the closing scene of the story, the narrator attempts to take Ottilie,
who had been left behind, to the burial of her mother. Instead, she turns off the “ main
travelled ” road ( Collected Stories 435) and on a brief holiday, when Ottilie ’ s despair
turns to laughter on the bright, beautiful spring day. Ottilie ’ s changed emotions
evoke an epiphany in the narrator: she realizes she has escaped death “ for one more
day at least ” (435). Although Ottilie represents the inescapable suffering and death
in the garden of the world, the narrator realizes that death is as inevitable as the sun ’ s
264
Ruth M. Alvarez
westward course, but that one must savor the evanescent beauty of life. The narrator ’ s
withdrawal to the Muller farm has been motivated by her desire to escape her troubles,
an escape from the reality and complexity of a more sophisticated and urban life. But
despite her attempts to escape painful reality in the apparent paradise of the Muller
farm, the narrator encounters it during her Arcadian retreat. The lesson to be drawn
from the narrator ’ s springtime holiday can be found in the example of Ottilie ’ s short
holiday from her daily drudgery. The narrator realizes that it takes courage to face
the painful reality of life, that labor, suffering, and death are humankind ’ s lot.
“ He ” was the f
i rst of Porter ’ s stories set in the South to receive publication. For
this work, Porter drew on her memories of the country poor she had observed in the
South and elsewhere. The mere fact that it appeared in New Masses , “ the principal
organ of the American cultural left from 1926 onward, ” 12 suggests that it can be read
from a political perspective. Although the story drew on Porter ’ s experiences and
observations in rural Texas, it was written during the period when her radicalism was
at its apogee. In August 1927, Porter had traveled to Boston and participated in the
demonstrations to protest the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti. Published in October
1927 , only two months after the executions, “ He ” is a miniature drama illustrating
the exploitation of the worker. It depicts the decline and disintegration of a Southern
family of poor whites, the Whipples, that is mirrored by the decline of their unnamed
simple - minded second son. Although the boy and his mother are the central fi gures,
Porter deliberately dehumanizes him; throughout, he is referred to only by the third
person masculine pronoun. Themselves members of the underclass, the Whipples ’
exploitation of their son is cold and calculating, like that of the contemporary capital-
ists excoriated in New Masses . During the course of the story, the boy declines from
robust physical health into permanent invalidism. Because he is not fully able to
understand risks to his well - being, his parents take advantage of him, assigning to
him dangerous tasks that they or his siblings cannot or will not perform. When
his health is broken, the Whipples abandon him to the care of strangers at the
County Home.
When “ He ” was revised for inclusion in Flowering Judas in 1930, the signifi cant
change Porter made was to capitalize all references to the Whipples
’
second son
throughout the text as if he were the Deity, thus making the story of the boy ’ s mar-
tyrdom more universal by implicit reference to the story of Christ. In addition, this
revision makes use of a commonplace of proletarian fi ction and journalism – proletar-
ian writers made use of religious characters and stories to draw morals and parallels
to the economic and political struggles of their own time. Porter amplifi es the power
of the concluding scene of the story, in which the sobbing boy is wrapped tightly in
the arms of his weeping mother, by alluding to a common subject of religious art,
the sorrowful Virgin holding the body of Christ after its removal from the cross. This
portrait of the Southern proletariat, intended at least partly as a vehicle of protest,
remains an enduring work of art.
The appearance of Porter ’ s shortest story “ Magic ” in the summer 1928 issue of
transition marked her debut in the highly regarded “ little magazines ” of the era.
Katherine Anne Porter
265
“ Magic ” was in illustrious company in that issue. The cover illustration was by Pablo
Picasso; the fi rst piece of fi ction in it was a “ continuation ” of James Joyce ’ s work in
progress, Finnegans Wake. Other contributors included some of Porter ’ s New York
friends: Malcolm Cowley, Slater Brown, Kenneth Burke, Robert Coates, Matthew
Josephson, John Herrmann, and Genevieve Taggard. Written in early 1927, “ Magic ”
was based on a story purportedly told to Porter in New Orleans by a mulatto maid
who had worked in a Basin Street house. In a 1955 letter to her publisher Donald
Brace, she called it “ a little low - life gloss on the gay New Orleans ” known by Amy,
a character in her “ Old Mortality. ” 13 Apparently witchcraft was very much on her
mind in 1927. In a letter of September of that year, Porter associated snooping
“
around Voodoo doctors in Louisiana
”
with
“
Cotton Mather and the Witchcraft
delusion, ” Mather being the subject of a never - published biography on which Porter
began work at this time. 14
The narrator of the story is the mulatto laundress and personal maid of Madame
Blanchard, to whom the maid tells the story of a prostitute named Ninette, who is
virtually imprisoned by the madam of a New Orleans “ fancy house. ” The story, like
“
He,
”
has political overtones. Ninette
’
s relationship with the cheating madam is
directly analogous to the plight of workers caught in involuntary economic servitude.
The prostitutes receive only a “ very small little ” of their total earnings ( Collected Stories
39), get into debt, and are brought back by the police or men hired by the madam
if they try to escape without paying their debts. Eventually when Ninette tries to
leave, she is brutally expelled but drawn back when the madam and her Creole cook
work a New Orleans charm. Submerged undercurrents in the story refl ect Porter ’ s
own experiences – brutal beatings suffered during her fi rst marriage and the sugges-
tion of abortion or miscarriage.
“ The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, ” the second of her stories to be published in
transition (February 1929 ), may have been written in February 1928 when Porter was
in Salem, Massachusetts, researching her biography of Cotton Mather. It must have
been seen before publication by Matthew Josephson, who was at that time both
Porter ’ s lover and a contributing editor to transition . It explores, like “ Holiday, ” two
of Porter ’ s favorite subjects, women ’ s roles and death, but with a narrower focus,
the character of Ellen Weatherall, rather than the composite of the Muller women.
However, in it, the depiction of these subjects is a more despairing and negative story.
Mrs. Weatherall has lived into a time in which the old verities and constants on which
she had grounded her life have been altered beyond recognition. Although modeled
her on her paternal grandmother, the title character also drew on Porter
’
s own
experiences.
“ The Jilting of Granny Weatherall ” explores death and its meanings. In this story,
however, there is no affi rmation of life and its eternal continuity as had been implied
in
“
Holiday.
”
Here the traditional roles of women
–
wife, worker, mother, and
daughter – seem devoid of meaning. As she had been jilted by her fi rst bridegroom
sixty years before, Mrs. Weatherall is jilted by the divine bridegroom on her deathbed.
The story repudiates the traditional domestic role for women. Mrs. Weatherall had
266
Ruth M. Alvarez
chosen such a role and had discovered on her deathbed that the promises held out to
those making that choice are not fulfi lled. This despairing view angrily rejects the
consolations offered to women who choose the traditionally proscribed role – not only
will faith in romance fail them, but religion will as well. Instead of a fi nal reckoning
with the Christian God and triumphant entry into paradise, Mrs. Weatherall ’ s life
ends with her own willful snuffi ng out of her life. Jilted by George, who, as St. George
&nbs
p; in religious art, would slay evil or paganism to win a maiden for the faith, Mrs.
Weatherall never is secure in her faith and, despite her best efforts, succumbs to
unbelief at the moment of death.
“ The Fig Tree, ” not published until June 1960 in Harper ’ s and included as one of
the “ Old Order ” stories in Collected Stories in 1965, was written in Salem, Massachu-
setts, in 1928 15 and very likely revised during or after her March to August 1929
residence in Bermuda. Only “ Holiday ” and “ The Jilting of Granny Weatherall ”
among Porter ’ s previous stories had drawn from the intimate details of Porter ’ s own
life in Texas, the material she was to mine so successfully for her Old Order stories.
The setting of the story draws from Porter ’ s recollections of her grandmother ’ s house
in Kyle, Texas, as well as from the family farm between Austin and San Marcos where
Porter summered with her family through 1902.
The earliest among Porter ’ s stories to feature her fi ctional alter ego, Miranda, the
story is narrated from the third person limited point of view of Miranda, the central
intelligence. The youngest of three siblings, the character is very young; apparently,
she does not yet attend school. The fi g groves of her grandmother ’ s town house and
farm in the country and individual low branched fi g trees are the vehicles through
which Miranda gains knowledge of life and death that allows her to allay her fears
of death. In the fi g grove in town, she misinterprets the singing of the tree frogs as
the cry of an animal buried alive; in the fi g grove at Cedar Grove, the farm, she
learns the true source of this sound. Unable to understand death, particularly that
of her mother, Miranda performs ritual burial rites of her own devising for “ any
creature that didn ’ t move or make a noise, or looked somehow different from the
live ones ” ( Collected Stories 354). Because her family departs for Cedar Grove before
Miranda has been able to complete her ritual burial of a dead chick, she imagines
that she had buried the chick alive. Until her Great - Aunt Eliza explains the true
origin of the sound “ Weep, weep ” (356), Miranda fears retribution, as she has learned
to expect swift punishment for not conforming to her grandmother ’ s strict code of