Old Mortality

Going along with the two previous posts, I thought the representation of hair in this story was interesting and might figure into the discussion of feminism. I know that talking about how hair represents femininity has probably come up in other English classes, and might be a little played out, but it was mentioned so many times in this story that I thought it deserved a little attention in the blog. I thought the scene which has been mentioned, where Amy cuts her hair after Gabriel compliments it, is an important scene. To me, this showed how the women wanted to be feminists (cutting off their long "feminine" hair that represents all sorts of feminine stereotypes) and making it short, but then they didn't really act as feminists (I guess depending on the definition one uses for "feminist").

Another thing I wanted to comment on was some of the misunderstandings in the story, like when cousin Eva is talking to Miranda, "Cousin Eva, my father shot at him, don't you remember? He didn't hit him...." (Porter 212). I think misunderstandings like this happen a lot in real life families, where someone remembers events differently than other family members, but you don't see misunderstandings too often in stories unless it is very intentional. This misunderstanding is interesting to me, because throughout the story I wondered why they started the story with the picture of Amy and what was going to come of that story. I think this scene is very important because so much of the first part of the story is their family history, and then we get this scene which really breaks down a lot of their understood family history. I think this scene is also important, because if Miranda had known the full truth about her family, I wonder if she would have turned out the same way, and if her story would have taken the same path as it did.