Title: Katherine Anne Porter and the Ordeal of Southern Womanhood
Abstract: Although Katherine Anne Porter is an established twentieth-century writer as well as a writer and a woman writer, rather unaccountably her work lies somewhat outside the literary mainstream. It need not surprise anyone that she has not been adequately understood as a woman writer, but she has been undervalued in other respects also. Several explanations may be offered for this neglect: Porter has published rather little, and except for the late-blooming novel Ship of Fools (1962) she wrote only stories, essays and short pieces. Because she virtually stopped writing after about 1950, her popularity has declined in recent decades; much of the criticism of her work has taken a formalist approach, moreover, so that she is known primarily for the purity of her style rather than for her themes or ideas. Little has been said of her relation to the great burst of writing in the South when Porter was most productive--the Southern Renascence of the thirties and forties which reflected the social, economic and racial upheaval of the New South and a new awareness of history. Still less has been said about Porter as a woman writer, although her sex was clearly essential to her relationship to society and tradition. A look at her autobiographical stories about her childhood gives us a better idea of Katherine Anne Porter as an American, Southern, woman writer. (1) Like so much American writing--particularly writing--Katherine Anne Porter's stories of the South (The Order series and Old Mortality) based on her family past in antebellum Kentucky and Texas during the Reconstruction Era offer a statement about the past and its impact on the present. At the same time, these stories provide a way of approaching Porter as a woman writer. Like Faulkner--also writing about the past in the mid-1930's--Porter takes as her subject the artificiality and inhumanity of the Order, presenting it from the standpoint of the woman's experience. While Faulkner emphasizes slavery and racial injustice, Porter takes as her subject the rigidly circumscribed experience and sexual repression of the white woman--kept like the blacks in submission and fear by the doctrines, taboos and social realities of a paternalistic culture. This theme is not restricted to Porter's stories of her native South. The theme of woman's oppression, especially emotional and sexual inhibition, may be found in everything she wrote. A feminist critical stance is a primary element in her view of American society--a view confirmed by her experience as an expatriate living in Mexico during the 1920's. Compared with the vividness of Mexican life, particularly the simplicity and spontaneity of the Mexican Indians, American culture seemed emotionally impoverished, narrowminded and dishonest. (2) The damage to women in such a society appeared even more obvious to her. During this period Porter frequently attacked the puritanism of American culture, joining in with other critics of the twenties, and along this line she began a fictional biography of Cotton Mather (3) which portrayed him as a sanctimonious hypocrite whose wife suffered martyrdom under his tyranny--jointly condemning self-serving Puritan piety and male-dominated marriage. Similar remarks on the narrowness of Protestant orthodoxy (Porter had been converted to Catholicism) and the failure of men to grant women the individuality and freedom they deserve are liberally scattered through her essays and reviews, and reveal the lively critical spirit and feminist awareness characterizing her work throughout her career. Woman's emotional frustration, sexual repression and subjection to the laws of a man's world constitute a major theme in Katherine Anne Porter's fiction. Female characters, who predominate in her work, are typically damaged by their experience. Family ties, marriage and love are threats to freedom; those women who attempt to escape are usually thwarted; and even those who gain independence achieve it at great cost. …
Publication Year: 1976
Publication Date: 1976-09-22
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 1
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot