The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall Character Analysis

In the short stories, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” and “The Hills like White Elephants,” both have woman protagonist who face difficult hardships that women usually faced during the 30’s and 40’s. Granny Weatherall is an old dying woman who is lying in a hospital bed drifting in and out of what seems to be near death. While drifting in and out, Granny Weatherall starts to reminisce on her life and everything that she has left undone. While realizing everything she left undone, Granny Weatherall seems to keep remembering one guy in particular who left her at the altar. On the other side, in “The Hills like White Elephants,” Jig is the protagonist who is facing a very hard decision in whether or not to keep her baby or to abort the unborn …show more content…
Weatherall in “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” is a woman who acts very different from the way Jig acted, as Granny Weatherall is a very independent woman who stands out from most of the other women of her time. In this point in time in history, a woman was expected to keep the house clean, raise the kids, and have food on the table when the man got off from work. Roseanne Hoefel agrees when she writes that society “Seems to minimize women’s importance by subordinating them to wish for a man” (9). In the time that Granny Weatherall was young, this did in fact see to be the case for many women including Granny. When Granny Weatherall was young, she says in the story that she used to be more eloquent and lady like, but once she was left at the altar by her first love, and was widowed by the death of her first husband, she became more dependent of self rather than looking for another man. In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” Mrs. Weatheralll says, “Digging post holes changed a woman. Riding country roads in the winter when women had their babies was another thing” (Porter 840). Granny Weatherall became a very hard working independent woman. After her husband died, she would go on to raise all of their kids by herself, along with working on the farm. When Granny Weatherall says this, the reader can infer that she was different from the other women of her time. Granny gives evidence of this when she talks about her driving the roads during the winter while most other women were having their babies at this time. Granny Weatherall is a very strong character who shows that women do not always have to depend on a man in order to live a successful