After reading the first half of "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" (Pale Horse, Pale Rider?), I'm not having a problem considering this and "Old Mortality" the Miranda stories, but I am certainly wondering - are these the same Mirandas?
Sarah pointed out in class that "Old Mortality" presented some more of Porter's eclipsed characters. We heard a lot about Amy, but nothing from Amy herself. We seemed to be following the story of Miranda, but only in glimpses until Part III, where she was the center of the action.
Given all of the exposition that Miranda's family receives in "Old Mortality", it seems odd that the characters we grew to "know" (I use the term loosely; you think you know a person . . . ) aren't referenced at all. Not even in passing. The only real reference I could find was the horse in the dream, Miss Lucy, which is what Amy named her horse, and what Gabriel names the following three horses he owns.
Is the Miss Lucy that Miranda dreams about her past echoing in her subconscious? Or is she - like the new Amy, like dream-Miss Lucy (in a long line of Miss Lucies) - just another namesake?
(If PRPH-Miranda is just a namesake, does that make her a living memorial of OM-Miranda? a new Miranda, who will suffer the same trajectory but a different fate? Porter's idea of a hilarious coincidence?)
I don't think Porter made the two Mirandas totally unconnected. Is the disparity between the Miranda of 1912 and the Miranda of 1918 (an assumed date; "Old Mortality" gives us clear settings, and I am guessing that given Miranda's age in 1912 (18), Miranda's age in PRPH (24), and the events of WWI it is 1917 or 18; the chronology matches up more or less) evidence of real change in a character who has had time to mature? Perhaps it is a thumbing of the nose at the narrator of "Old Mortality," who closes the story skeptical of whether or not Miranda can truly sever herself from her past?
I'd love to get thoughts on whether or not they are the same character; perhaps there is another reference to OM Miranda in PRPH that I missed, or a more convincing argument for them being completely different people.
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I believe they are the same character at wildly different, though relatively close, parts of her life. Miranda, at the end of OM, is just beginning to recognize her own agency in the world: she rejects the weight of her family history (as well as the early-married life common in he family) so that she may form her own identity, separate from tradition. The Miranda we see in PHPR, a strong, idependent career woman, is the result of that decision. This Miranda need not be preoccupied with her family because her life has little to do with now. She has struck out on her own, has not married and has no apparent desire to do so, and now faces a new set of limitations in a broader world. It is the same character, just grown up in a not-too unexpected manner, I think.
(I think so too, but)
Isn't the disparity between Old Miranda and Pale Miranda just huge? To have foregone a past that is so multifaceted - with letters and pictures and artifacts, stories told from multiple points of view that come to radically different conclusions - and become a totally different person is no easy feat.
That we can't find traces of Old Miranda in Pale Miranda is, I think, the most defining characteristic we have of Miranda as a whole. There is a six year gap in our understanding of her narrative, and I don't want to know what happened - I want to know why we don't know what happened.
There is so much left unsaid, unexplained, there is so little resemblance left between them - all of this to the point that if Pale Miranda was named something else we would have no idea that she and Old Miranda were connected at all. But they are connected.
Why? What does that say about her? What does that say about the stories?
I also believe that they are one and the same Miranda. Like daniel said, she has separated herself from the family she knew. We get little glimpses of her past life like when she mentions how she had taken an unconventional path by being a journalist, eating alone late at night and smoking cigarettes. Also, at one point she plays with the idea of going home to die, so that she can take part in another family tradition. And finally, when she talks to Adam that she was never happy, though she did know that she liked certain things and disliked others.
I do agree that there is a massive disparity in personality from OM to PHPR (though I think we get too little of her in OM to make a complete formulation of her character). It almost seems that she travels from one world to another, which is perhaps a result of the time period. Miranda, in OM, is the scion of a large, traditionalist agrarian family that is tied much more to old-world, antebellum values than the modern world we find her in in PHPR. I think that in a modern context, young people moving from rural to urban would experience a culture shock that would affect their personality even more so than growing up already does (how many people do you know that are the same person at 24 as they were at 18?). In this way, I think the disparity is a rather accurate tool Porter uses to show a character's maturation, and is thus not so jarring.
These "3 short novels" were published together in one volume, Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Because "Old Mortality" was the first piece in the volume, I think Porter would have assumed that a reader going straight through the book would immediately recognize the names of the horses in the very first pages of "Pale Horse." So I assumed they were the same character because I read that as a flag for readers.
But more to the point, I think the movement and structure within the 3 novel volume is significant. "Old Mortality" is obviously very much focused on the past. And "Pale Horse" is focused on the future (the country's future, the future of Miranda and Adam, the future of Miranda's mortal life, etc). I would like to suggest that "Noon Wine," (though it stands, of course, on its own), represents a loss of innocence--a break between past and future. I found there to be a static quality to the first part of "Noon Wine," followed by a violent event that hurtles the characters forward into an inevitably ruined future. In a weird way, I think "Noon Wine" speaks to those missing years in Miranda's life in the sense that she is forced into a disillusioned present and an uncertain future.
If they are, in fact, the same character, I think it is interesting to consider that we can have not only eclipsed characters, but eclisped portions of a character's history. If they are not the same person, then I think the trajectory of the 3 novels in the volume still express the zeitgeist of Porter's age: I think the movement from Old Southern innocence, through violent shock, and into fallen modernity must have been deeply felt.
I found the part that I was talking about, when Miranda is explaining to Adam about her life: "You'd get the notion I had a very sad life...and perhaps it was, but I'd be glad enough to have it now...That's not true, but that's the way I feel now" This Miranda distinctly mirrors the Miranda from the previous story, at least for me.
I think they are the same Miranda's as well but as Austin goes on why do we not know what happens to her during the six year gap. It seems that those six years would be somewhat necessary in her life seeing as at the end of "Old Mortality" Miranda was married. So how does she go from being married to having this lonely life as a journalist and her only real companion is Adam whom is going to war.
While it seems we have established that the three Mirandas are the same Mirandas at different periods in her life, I would like to offer an answer to the question: why is there so much left out of Porter's life?
I think the answer may the same as the reason that movies do not include every detail of the main character's life but often give the audience a glimpse of moments that define them, shape them, and challenge them. OM reveals what shaped Porter's childhood, and in a sense is the backstory to her own novel. PHPR is a moment in her life that challenged her. It was truly a life/death situation for her. Porter wisely selects what she wants the world to read and understand about her life. She chooses what her audience knows and will never know. The mystery of the hidden will be her own.
What she hides may also be dull. If people read my daily journal entries about the happenings of my everyday life, I'm sure they'd be bored to tears. What people yearn to read are the stories that mold character into who they are...
I think it's awesome Porter got a chance to show the world what she wants them to see about the experiences that defined her existence.
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