Paul, her male guide (367). Miranda ’ s epiphany brings understanding that pregnancy
and childbirth can result in death, the unspoken cause of the death of her mother. If
“ The Grave ” does depict “ the fi rst step towards the future out of the past Miranda
has lived in all her childhood, ” 19 is the reader to conclude that Miranda will reject
the traditional roles of wife and mother? Her attitude toward her dolls provides a
clue: “ for though she never cared much for her dolls she liked seeing them in fur
coats ” (366); she would rather contemplate dolls as aesthetic objects than play mother
to them.
The sixth and last of the Old Order stories in the “ Legend and Memory ” manuscript
is “ The Last Leaf. ” The “ last leaf ” of the title is Nannie, the grandmother ’ s black
contemporary, originally bought as a playmate and servant when Sophia Jane was fi ve
years old. Having spent
“
all their lives together,
”
they were
“
unable to imagine
getting on without each other ” ( Collected Stories 330). In “ The Fig Tree, ” “ The Source, ”
and “ The Journey, ” she is the stock fi gure of Southern fi ction and legend, “ the faithful
old servant … , a freed slave ” ( Collected Stories 349). Many of the “ facts ” of her biog-
raphy, including the birth date Sophia Jane assigned to her and recorded in the family
Bible (June 11, 1827), are narrated in “ The Journey. ” However, in “ The Last Leaf, ”
as the last remnant of the old order surviving into changing times, she escapes the
restrictions imposed on her by virtue of her gender and her race.
Nannie asserts her independence after she is nearly physically worn out by more
than seven decades of serving Sophia Jane and her family. Even for a period of time
after Sophia Jane ’ s death, she remained the maternal and domestic mainstay for Sophia
Jane
’
s son Harry and his three motherless children. Maria,
“
the elder girl,
”
later
observed that they “ went on depending on her as they always had, letting her assume
more burdens and more, allowing her to work harder than she should ” ( Collected Stories
348). When the opportunity arises, she asks for and receives “ a house of her own, ” “ a
little cabin across the narrow creek ” (348). Although the members of her “ white
family ” had the place cleaned, repaired, and outfi tted for her, they are “ surprised, a
little wounded, ” and “ put upon ” that she moved away from them (349). Her move
transforms her; she forsakes the black and white dresses, aprons, and caps of a house
servant for a blue bandanna and corncob pipe, the proper attire for what she becomes,
272
Ruth M. Alvarez
“ an aged Bantu woman of independent means ” (349). Contentedly sitting “ in the
luxury of having at her disposal all of God ’ s good time there was in this world, ”
Nannie is a rebuke to her white family ’ s “ complacent ” belief that she “ was a real
member of the family, perfectly happy with them ” (351, 349).
Having rejected the role of a servant normally assigned to one of her race, she
refuses to be confi ned by gender. The reader learns, in this last story in the 1934 Old
Order sequence, “ that Uncle Jimbilly and Aunt Nannie were husband and wife. ”
Their “ marriage of convenience ” arranged by others “ had dissolved itself between
them when the reasons for it had likewise dissolved. ” In modern times, “ blood and
family stability
”
are no longer important reasons for marriage, nor are arranged
marriages the norm ( Collected Stories 350). Comfortably ensconced in her cabin, Aunt
Nannie refuses to resume the traditional female role subservient to men, “ pointedly ”
dismissing Uncle Jimbilly ’ s attempt at insinuating himself into her private realm, “ I
don ’ aim to pass my las ’ days waitin on no man. … I ’ ve served my time, I ’ ve done
my do, and dat ’ s all ” (351).
The story also exposes how the antebellum South ’ s unwritten codes defi ning race
and gender roles brought unanticipated negative consequences in the early twentieth
century. The exploitation and subjugation of women and African Americans are as
deleterious to the oppressors as to those whom they oppressed. Accustomed to having
servants, leisure, and luxury, members of the ruling class became lazy and self
-
indulgent, unable to properly care for their property and assets or to fi nd profi table
work. In “ The Last Leaf, ” Harry and his children fl ounder without Nannie to sustain
and support them.
They were growing up, times were changing, the old world was sliding from under
their feet, they had not yet laid hold of the new one. They missed Nannie every day.
As their fortunes went down, and they had few servants, they needed her terribly. They
realized how much the old woman had done for them, simply by seeing how, almost
immediately after she went, everything slackened, lost tone, went off edge. Work did
not accomplish itself as it once had. They had not learned how to work for themselves,
they were all lazy and incapable of sustained effort or planning. They had not been
taught and they had not yet educated themselves. ( Collected Stories 349 – 50)
The story also hints at one of the root causes of the weakness of the Southern
men so clearly delineated in “ The Journey, ” “ smothering matriarchal tyranny ” ( Col-
lected Stories 351). Petted, spoiled, and indulged by women of both races from birth,
the males of the Old Order are profl igate, weak, and infantilized. Women restricted
by virtue of their gender to a narrow realm of infl uence, exert their power indirectly.
In “ The Last Leaf, ” Nannie “ gets the better of ” Sophia Jane ’ s proud and stiff - necked
son Harry by reminding him of her service to the family as his wet nurse. Despite
the knowledge that he knew that “ this was not literally true, ” he submits to her,
“
being of that latest generation of sons who acknowledged, however reluctantly,
however bitterly, their mystical never to be forgiven debt to the womb that
Katherine Anne Porter
273
bore them, and the breast that suckled them ” 351). The reader may draw the con-
clusion that both women and men “ can be oppressed by familial relationships. ” 20
Porter ’ s fi ction set in the South and Mexico, as well as that depicting the sick,
grotesquely dislocated culture of the twentieth century, is both particular and uni-
versal. It makes use of and examines the particular places and individuals that she
knew and the historical events that she experienced and witnessed. Her work is set
in Mexico City, Hacienda Tetlapayac, and a pre
-
Hispanic archaeological site in
Mexico; in the agrarian South, rural New England, and cities (New York, New
Orleans, and Denver) of her own country; in Berlin; and on board a ship sailing from
Mexico to Berlin. Her characters draw on individuals she knew or observed in Mexico,
members of the paternal side of her fa
mily, her spouses and lovers, and inhabitants
of the rural Texas community where she grew up as well as those observed in the
cities and other places where she resided during her adult life. Her work documents
her experience of the changes wrought by historical events as well as the epochal
events themselves; these include the Civil War, the Mexican Revolution, World War
I, women ’ s suffrage, and the rise of the Nazis in Germany. However, making use of
the personal and particular, Porter explored universal subjects and themes: art and
the artist, religion, race, gender, sexuality, death, and the inevitability of decay and
change.
In a 1953 letter, Porter summarized her understanding of the artist ’ s role: “ The
artist must work some order into … ‘ his little handful of chaos. ’ … Life is one bloody,
horrible confusion, and the one business of the artist is to know it, admit it, and
manifest his vision of order in the human imagination ” ( “ Ole Woman River, ” Collected
Essays 278). Porter strove to produce fi ction that expressed issues and ideas that were
central to the concerns of humankind. It was her view that art should observe and
expose the impossible conditions of the world in which humans live, that it should
provide a guide for poor, suffering humanity. She was interested in raising important
questions for her readers to ponder, to arouse the intellect and the emotions, to con-
front apathy and indifference. She suggested no solutions but rather pointed to some
of the problems of human existence. Enduring works of art, her stories are evidence
of her success at what she once called her “ vocation and fate ” ( “ You Are What You
Read ” 248).
In the face of such shape and weight of … misfortune, the voice of the individual
artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the
grass; but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names
and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that
matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive govern-
ments and creeds and societies, even the very civilizations that produced them. They
cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the
only reality. They are what we fi nd again when the ruins are cleared away. And even
the smallest and most incomplete offering … can be a proud act in defense of that
faith. ( “ Introduction to the 1940 edition of Flowering Judas and Other Stories , ” Collected
Essays 457)
274
Ruth M. Alvarez
Notes
1
The four derivative stories are “ The Shattered
from this collection of Porter ’ s short stories
Star ” ( Everyland , January 1920 ), “ The Faithful
will appear in the text cited as Collected Stories .
Princess ” ( Everyland , February 1920 ), “ The
7
Thomas F. Walsh, Katherine Anne Porter and
Magic Ear Ring ” ( Everyland , March 1920 ),
Mexico 64.
and “ The Adventures of Hadji: A Tale of a
8
Katherine Anne Porter to Freda Kirchwey,
Turkish Coffee House ” ( Asia , August 1920 ).
September 8, 1921, Papers of Katherine
2
The two short novels set in the South are
Anne Porter, Special Collections, University
“ Noon Wine ” ( Story , June 1937 ) and “ Old
of Maryland Libraries. Hereinafter cited as
Mortality ” ( Southern Review , Spring 1937 ).
KAP Papers in the text.
Both were subsequently collected in
Pale
9
KAP to Richard Blackmur, November 29,
Horse, Pale Rider in 1939.
1929, in The Hound & Horn Letters , ed. Mitzi
3
These works represent Porter ’ s attempt “ to
Berger Hamovitch , 127.
achieve in the way of order and form and state-
10
“ Hacienda, ” Uncollected Early Prose of Katherine
ment in a period of grotesque dislocations in a
Anne Porter , eds. Alvarez and Walsh , 270.
whole society when the world was heaving in
11
Hubert Howe Bancroft , Native Races of the
the sickness of a millennial change ” ( “ Introduc-
Pacifi c States of North America III, 359.
tion to the 1940 edition of Flowering Judas and
12
Barbara Foley , Radical Representations: Politics
Other Stories , ” Collected Essays and Occasional
and Form in U. S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929 -
Writings of Katherine Anne Porter 457; hereinaf-
1941 , 65.
ter cited as Collected Essays in the text). The
13
KAP to Donald Brace, January 30, 1955,
fi ve stories include “ Rope ” ( Second American
KAP Papers.
Caravan , 1928 ), “ Theft ” ( Gyroscope , November
14
KAP to Isidore Schneider, September 11,
1929 ),
“ The
Cracked
Looking
Glass ”
1927, KAP Papers.
( Scribner ’ s , May 1932 ), “ The Downward Path
15
KAP to Gay Porter Holloway, March 5,
to Wisdom ” ( Harper ’ s Bazaar , December
1928, KAP Papers; KAP to Josephine
1939 ), and “ A Day ’ s Work ” ( Nation , February
Herbst, undated but written in Salem, c.
10,
1940
). The two short novels are
“
Pale
1928, Papers of Josephine Herbst, Beinecke
Horse, Pale Rider ” ( Southern Review , Winter
Library, Yale University.
1938 ) and “ The Leaning Tower ” ( Southern
16
KAP to Donald Brace, April 9, 1934, KAP
Review , Autumn 1941 ).
Papers.
4
The other six include “ He, ” “ Magic, ” “ The
17
“ Legend and Memory, ” KAP Papers.
Jilting
of
Granny
Weatherall, ”
“ The
18
KAP to Charles A. Pearce, May 31, 1934,
Witness, ” “ The Grave, ” and “ The Journey. ”
KAP Papers.
5
Manuel Gamio, Introduction, Synthesis and 19
“ Legend and Memory, ” KAP Papers.
Conclusions of the Work 40.
20
Jane Krause DeMouy , Katherine Anne Porter ’ s
6
“ Virgin Violeta, ” The Collected Stories of Kath-
Women 136.
erine Anne Porter 22 – 3. Hereinafter quotations
References and Further Reading
Alvarez , Ruth M. , and Thomas F. Walsh , eds.
DeMouy , Jane Krause . Katherine Anne Porter
’ s
Uncollected Early Prose of Katherine Anne Porter .
Women: The Eye of Her Fiction . Austin : University
Austin : University of Texas Press , 1993 .
of Texas Press , 1983 .
Bancroft , Hubert Howe . Native Races of the Pacifi c
Foley , Barbara . Radical Representations: Politics and
States of North Ame
rica . 5 vols. New York :
Form in U. S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929
–
1941 .
Appleton , 1874 – 6 .
Durham, NC : Duke University Press , 1993 .
Katherine Anne Porter
275
Gamio , Manuel . Introduction, Synthesis and Conclu-
— — — . “ Holiday . ” Atlantic Monthly 206 (Decem-
sions of the Work: The Population of the Valley of
ber 1960 ): 44 – 56 .
Teotihuc á n . Mexico City : Talleres Grafi cos de la
— — — . “ The Jilting of Granny Weatherall . ”
Naci ó n , 1922 .
transition 15 (February 1929 ): 139 – 45 .
Givner , Joan , ed. Katherine Anne Porter: Conversa-
— — — . “ The Leaning Tower . ” Southern Review 7
tions . Jackson : University Press of Mississippi ,
(Autumn 1941 ): 219 – 79 .
1987 .
— — — . The Leaning Tower and Other Stories . New
— — — . Katherine Anne Porter: A Life . Athens :
York : Harcourt, Brace , 1944 .
University of Georgia Press , 1991 .
— — — . “ Magic . ” transition 13 (Summer 1928 ):
Hamovitch , Mitzi Berger , ed. The Hound & Horn
229 – 31 .
Letters
.
Athens
:
University of Georgia Press
, — — — . “ The Magic Ear Ring . ” Everyland 2
1982 .
(March 1920 ): 86 – 7 .
Herbst , Josephine . Papers. Beinecke Library, Yale
— — — . “ Mar í a Concepci ó n . ” Century 105 (Decem-
University, New Haven, CT.
ber 1922 ): 224 – 39 .
Porter , Katherine Anne . “ The Adventures of
— — — . “ The Martyr . ” Century 106 (July 1923 ):
Hadji: A Tale of a Turkish Coffee House . ” Asia
410 – 13 .
20 (August 1920 ): 683 – 4 .
— — — . “ Noon Wine . ” Story 10 (June 1937 ):
— — — . “ The Circus . ” Southern Review 1 (July
71 – 103 .
1935 ): 36 – 41 .
— — — . “ The Old Order ” (later published as “ The
— — — . The Collected Essays and Occasional Writings
Journey ” ) . Southern Review 1 (Winter 1936 ):
of Katherine Anne Porter . New York : Seymour
495 – 509 .
Lawrence/Delacorte , 1970 .
— — — . “ Old Mortality . ” Southern Review 2 (Spring
— — — .
The Collected Stories of Katherine
1937 ): 686 – 735 .
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 60