The Failures of Family Romance in Katherine Anne Porter’s Old Mortality
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This essay analyzes Katherine Anne Porter’s short 1937 novel Old Mortality from the critical perspectives of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the “family romance,” Richard H. King’s conception of the “Southern family romance,” and contemporary feminist scholarship that corrects Freud’s and King’s patriarchal biases. Through her young protagonist Miranda Rhea, Porter challenges traditional psychological and cultural frameworks that fail to accommodate Southern women’s quest for independence. Neither her family’s idealized account of her dead Aunt Amy nor the bitter realism of her living Cousin Eva promises Miranda genuine freedom, so she rejects both. At the end of Old Mortality, Miranda’s joint “hopefulness” and “ignorance” represent her necessary first step toward self-definition outside prescribed patriarchal narratives.
Abstract
This essay analyzes Katherine Anne Porter’s short 1937 novel Old Mortality from the critical perspectives of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the “family romance,” Richard H. King’s conception of the “Southern family romance,” and contemporary feminist scholarship that corrects Freud’s and King’s patriarchal biases. Through her young protagonist Miranda Rhea, Porter challenges traditional psychological and cultural frameworks that fail to accommodate Southern women’s quest for independence. Neither her family’s idealized account of her dead Aunt Amy nor the bitter realism of her living Cousin Eva promises Miranda genuine freedom, so she rejects both. At the end of Old Mortality, Miranda’s joint “hopefulness” and “ignorance” represent her necessary first step toward self-definition outside prescribed patriarchal narratives.