Abandonment and Salvation——The Jilting of Granny Weatheral

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Catalogue

• Montage and Content
• Jilting and Salvation
  • Jilting
  • Salvation
  • result
• Summary and Thinking

1.Montage and content

Montage style in literature refers to piecing together fragments of different times, scenes, and emotions to reveal a character’s complex inner state. By leaping through time, space, and memory, it captures the true moments of psychology

• A leap of memory

  • paragraphs 27: so that by the time you finished you almost forgot what you were working for. What was it I set out to do? She asked herself intently, but she could not remember. A fog rose over the valley, she saw it marching across the creek swallowing the trees and moving up the hill like an army of ghosts.

• The intertwining of memory and reality
  • Owing to death of Hapsy, it’s unreal when granny thought of her.

  • paragraphs 42: Hapsy came up close and said, “I thought you’d never come,” and looked at her very searchingly and said, “You haven’t changed a bit!” They leaned forward to kiss, when Cornelia began whispering from a long way off,

• content introduction
  • In a nutshell, this novel is about an elderly woman reflects on her life on her deathbed, confronting the pain of abandonment, ultimately failing to find salvation in her heart.
• reading recommendation
  • Marking the passage as you read it so that you can clearly distinguish about her memory and reality

2.Jilting and Salvation

• From Granny’s memory we can realize her miserable but tough life. We will lay stress on the pain George caused

Jilting

• Be abandoned by george

  • paragraphs 30: Such a fresh breeze blowing and such a green day with no threats in it. But he had not come, just the same. 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?

  • She was dumped by George at the wedding that the pain stamped on her memory forever

  • paragraphs 50: The whole bottom dropped out of the world, and there she was blind and sweating with nothing under her feet and the walls falling away.

  • Although it has been 60 years since her weeding, she still feels scary owing to the depth of the pain that abandoning george caused her
  • A beautiful expression:

  • paragraphs 30 last sentence: Better turn over, hide from the light, sleeping in the light gave you nightmares.

  • Nevertheless, in paragraph 38 from Cornelia’s word,“That was this morning, Mother. It’s night now. Here’s the nurse.”, We can find that this light might be her glistening tears. Recall George would make her sad and cause her had a bad dream.

  • I was amazed by these expression, like “No footsteps but a sudden hand on her cheek” in paragraph 19, we know it’s Cornelia’s hand, that’s means Cornelia stayed by granny’s bed the whole time
• husband John’s early leave and the god ignore her request
  • In the paragraphs 26, we can know that John early died and Granny must bring her children up alone.
  • In the end of article, She desired god gave her a sign, but there was nothing response her.

Salvation

• She is a powerful women who beget miracle. Even though she created a better material condition, she was still empty inside.
• A powerful women for her salvation
  • Hard working in real life

    • in paragraph 26: Riding country roads in the winter when women had their babies was another thing: sitting up nights with sick horses and sick Negroes and sick children and hardly ever losing one. John, I hardly ever lost one of them!

  • Encouraging her heart

    • in paragraph 30: Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind. Don’t let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get jilted. You were jilted, weren’t you? Then stand up to it

    • Motivating herself against unfair life and recover from the pain of abandonment

result

• She spends her life to repair her broken heart. However, Loneliness company with her forever.

• paragraphs 43: there was something else besides the house and the man and the children. Oh, surely they were not all? What was it? Something not given back

• She asked herself that she realize his broken heart couldn’t recover. So she asked god for help. But she was jilted again

• paragraphs 63:For the second time there was no sign. Again no bridegroom and the priest in the house. She could not remember any other sorrow because this grief wiped them all away.

• After schedule the thing she must do, she blew out the light which means she received that her life end with grief

3.Summary and Thinking

• A stream-of-consciousness novel that fully demonstrates montage writing styles
• Be jilted by George changed her fate, she became more powerful to redeem her heart and had better material condition. However, loneliness accompany her throughout her life.
• Healing wounds is hard. Salvation can’t piece together a shattered heart.