Unraveling of Myths in Porter’s Old Mortality :: Porter’s Old Mortality

Unraveling of Myths in Porters Old mortalityThere was a kind of faded diversion in the land, with its vase of flowers and its draped velvet curtains, the kind of case and the kind of curtains that no one would have any more. The clothes were not even romantic-looking, take away merely roughly terribly out of stylus, and the whole affair was associated, in the minds of the little girls, with dead things the smell of Grandmothers medicated cigarettes and her furniture that smelled of beeswax, and her unstylish perfume, Orange Flower. The woman in the picture had been Aunt Amy, but she was wholly a ghost in a frame, and a sad, pretty story from old times. She had been beautiful, much loved, unhappy, and she had died young. (173) Porter uses this second paragraph from Old Mortality to suggest themes and foreshadow future happenings in this story. This passage, which focuses exclusively on the background of Aunt Amys picture, is full of language suggesting the outdated feeling of the photograph. Phrases resembling faded merriment, the kind of things no one would have any more, most terribly out of fashion, associated with dead things, and old-fashioned lend the picture a sense of falseness that only time has exposed. This falseness counts to hint to the lector to be wary of accepting things as they are given. The way that the girls seem to find everything in the photograph to be dated and out of fashion to a fault foreshadows Mirandas inability to identify with the myth of Amy. It may also point to a larger theme of the crumbling ideal of the Southern Belle and the late collapsing walls of the rigid confines of the role of upper class, white women.The narrative crowd out be seen as a continual unraveling by Miranda of the many myths generated by the family. The myth of who Aunt Amy was is a part of the larger myth of what constitutes a southern belle to the families of the Old South. Porters repeated use of flowers, beautiful, to that degree easily per ishable, can be seen as imagery for the mythical Amy, suggesting her fragility. moreover just as the smells that the girls associate with the picture medicated cigarettes, beeswax, and perfume exist to covering up the real smells of the grandmothers things and person, so does the created myth of valetudinarianism cover up Amys real independence, strength, and finally her death.