In the short story "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall", Granny's eighty years old and about to die. Her thoughts are a messy mixture of memories and imaginary conversation. Among the things she remembers, one seems to be the event that hurt her pride the most. She was left by a man she once loved, George, on the day of their wedding.
Granny is a proud woman who worries too much about what other people will think of her, even her own children and grandchildren as we can tell from the following excerpt:
"The box in the attic with all those letters tied up, well, she’d have to go through that tomorrow. All those letters—George’s letters and John’s letters and her letters to them both—lying around for the children to find afterwards made her uneasy. Yes, that would be tomorrow’s business. No use to let them know how silly she had been once."
However, Granny was also a very strong woman all her life, taking care of everyone around her, fighting life's adversities with determination. That's why lying in bed, weak, bothers her to the point of insolence.
She wasn't able to forget George, even though she married John. And now, when she's about to die, Granny's pride and her memory of being left are the last thing she can remember. The pain she felt in the past was too much to bear and, although she had a full life, it wasn't enough to wipe it from her heart:
"Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind. Don’t let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get jilted. You were kilted, weren’t you? Then stand up to it."
"Yes, she had changed her mind after sixty years and she would like to see George. I want you to find George. Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him. I want him to know I had my husband just the same and my children and my house like any other woman. A good house too and a good husband that I loved and fine children out of him. Better than I had hoped for even. Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more. Oh, no, oh, God, no, there was something else besides the house and the man and the children. Oh, surely they were not all? What was it? Something not given back. . ."
Granny needs George's validation, she needs him to know she had a good life, otherwise it will feel as if it was all for nothing. Her strength and determination were her weapons in fighting the shame and disappointment she felt. Granny's whole life was lived in order to prove George foolish for choosing not to marry her.
