Feminist Issues In Katherine Anne Porter Essay

, Research Paper

Historically women have been considered intellectually inferior to men and also a source of temptation and evil. Women have also been considered naturally weaker than men, squeamish, and unable to perform work requiring muscular or intellectual development. In most early societies, and up until fairly recently, domestic chores were relegated to women, leaving heavier labor such as hunting, plowing, and careers outside of the home to men. Maternity was considered the natural biological role of the woman, and it has also been highly regarded as her social role as well. Young girls learned from their mother’s example that cooking, cleaning, and caring for children was the behavior expected of her when she grew up. Formal education for girls was, historically, second to that of boys. In colonial America, girls were taught to read and write at dame schools but they could only attend the school with the boys when there was enough room.

The views of women are present all throughout history in the writings of the times. Katherine Anne Porter, an important American author, was born in Texas in 1890. She spent all of her early life in Texas and Louisiana. Her mother died when she was two and she was raised, in poverty, by her paternal grandmother and father. She was educated in convent schools. She was brought up in a region where a woman’s femininity defined her. The idea of the southern belle was prevalent in her childhood. Porter defied these ideals by first becoming a journalist, and then becoming a fiction writer who was neither a feminist, nor feminine. Some of Porter’s beliefs and experiences are seen in her writings. She was known mostly for her short stories and her one novel. In 1930 Porter’s first book was published, Flowering Judas and Other Stories. This work contains the story “Old Mortality.”

In the 1930’s Katherine Anne Porter wrote “Old Mortality.” At first reading, this is a story of two children growing up in a family that relishes in the past. This work, which is set in the south, is separated into three sections with the first one beginning in 1885 and the last one taking place in 1912. There are three main characters in this story; Miranda, Miranda’s Aunt Amy, and her Cousin Eva. Miranda’s older sister, Maria, is highly involved in the first two sections of the story but the reader is not able to see her inner thoughts nor her transformation from a child into an adult. Some critics believe that “Old Mortality” is simply a story of romantic ideals, romantic love, and the past, but there is also an issue of femininity present.

In the first section of the story Maria and Miranda are merely children, twelve and eight years of age respectively. They are being raised by their grandmother and their father. In every aspect of their lives they are taught about the ideal of the southern belle. Miranda’s father and grandmother preserve the family history by refusing to admit the imperfections in the women in their family. Miranda hears her father talking about a picture of Amy, saying “…she was much slimmer than that, too. There were never any fat women in the family, thank God” (174). Miranda knows that the reality was to the contrary of that statement because her great-aunt Keziah was so overweight that her husband “had refused to allow her to ride his good horses” (174).

It is through Amy that Maria and Miranda learn their roles in society. They were able to learn what women were supposed to be, or rather, at that time, what women were supposed to look like, and Amy had fulfilled all of the requirements of a female beauty.

“There were points of beauty by which one was judged severely. First, a beauty must be tall; whatever the color the eyes, the hair must be dark, the darker the better; the skin must be pale and smooth. Lightness and swiftness of movement were important points. A beauty must be a good dancer, superb on horseback, with a serene manner, and amiable gaiety tempered with dignity at all hours. Beautiful teeth and hands, of course, and over and above all this, some mysterious crown of enchantment that attracted and held the heart” (176).

There is nothing to speak of in this quote about any mental abilities nor moral or virtuous behavior, with the exception of the mention of having dignity. The description of a woman that Miranda is brought up to want to emulate, is simply that of a facade, a certain look which she hopes she will one day she be able to achieve. “Miranda persisted all through her childhood in believing,…, that by some miracle she would grow into a tall, cream-colored brunette” (176).

To contrast the vision of beauty that Maria and Miranda are constantly reminded of, they are also told what the opposite of beauty was. Their cousin Eva, is well-known in the family for being ugly. “Eva, shy and chinless, straining her upper lip over two enormous teeth…She wore her mother’s clothing, made over, and taught Latin in a Female Seminary. She believed in votes for women, and had traveled about making speeches” (178). Eva never married because she was not beautiful. She was intelligent and worked to get women the right to vote and because of this was not able to charm men with her conversation.

The young girls arre treated by their father in accordance with these beauty oriented attitudes. Harry, the girls’ father, is described as a “a pleasant, everyday sort of father”