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

Unraveling of Myths in doormans Old Mortality in that respect was a kind of faded merriment in the background, with its vase of flowers and its draped velvet-textured curtains, the kind of case and the kind of curtains that no one would have either more. The clothes were not even romantic-looking, bur merely most awful out of fashion, and the whole affair was harmonized, in the minds of the little girls, with shortly things the sniff out of Grandmothers medicated cigarettes and her furniture that smelled of beeswax, and her old-fashioned perfume, Orange Flower. The woman in the picture had been Aunt Amy, but she was barely 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) porters beer uses this second paragraph from Old Mortality to suggest themes and foreshadow early happenings in this story. This passage, which focuses exclusively on the background of Aunt Amys picture, is well(p) of lan guage suggesting the outdated feeling of the moving-picture show. Phrases like 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 seems to hint to the reader to be wary of judge things as they are given. The way that the girls seem to find everything in the photograph to be dated and out of fashion also foreshadows Mirandas inability to identify with the myth of Amy. It may also point to a large theme of the crumbling ideal of the Southern Belle and the slowly collapsing walls of the rigid confines of the subroutine of upper class, white women.The narrative can 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, bea utiful, yet easily perishable, can be seen as imagery for the mythical Amy, suggesting her fragility. But just as the smells that the girls associate with the picture medicated cigarettes, beeswax, and perfume exist to cover up the real smells of the granny knots things and person, so does the created myth of frailty cover up Amys real independence, strength, and finally her death.