Ambivalent Art of Katherine Anne Porter
Publication Year: 2005
Throughout Porter's long career, writes Titus, she “repeatedly probed cultural arguments about female creativity, a woman's maternal legacy, romantic love, and sexual identity, always with startling acuity, and often with painful ambivalence.” Much of her writing, then, serves as a medium for what Titus terms Porter's “gender-thinking”--her sustained examination of the interrelated issues of art, gender, and identity.
Porter, says Titus, rebelled against her upbringing yet never relinquished the belief that her work as an artist was somehow unnatural, a turn away from the essential identity of woman as “the repository of life,” as childbearer. In her life Porter increasingly played a highly feminized public role as southern lady, but in her writing she continued to engage changing representations of female identity and sexuality. This is an important new study of the tensions and ambivalence inscribed in Porter's fiction, as well as the vocational anxiety and gender performance of her actual life.
Published by: University of Georgia Press
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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pp. xi-xii
Katherine Anne Porter has been on my mind for many, many years, and she has been good company. I want to thank the many colleagues, friends, and fellow scholars who have provided invaluable support for this project. A special thank you to the members of the Katherine Anne Porter Society for years of rewarding conversation. I am grateful to St. Olaf College for sabbatical leave...
INTRODUCTION
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pp. 1-13
In a story composed during the 1920s but unpublished in her lifetime, Katherine Anne Porter created a brilliant and masochistic young woman who dedicates her life to art. The Princess glories publicly in her choice but weeps privately at its price—social alienation and childlessness. "Nature is abhorrent, a vulgarity," the Princess proclaims; she celebrates an eccentric creativity expressed in...
1. The Princess of Art
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pp. 14-26
Sometime around 1927, Katherine Anne Porter struggled to complete a strange and bitter tale about a young woman who has dedicated her life to creating art. The result, although unfinished, represents an extraordinary document in Porter's exploration of gender roles and sexuality and, indeed, in the history of women's writing. "The Princess" creates a symbolic world that serves to define...
2. Fairy Tales and Foreigners
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pp. 27-46
When the young acolyte looks at the Princess, he sees her alienation and difference. An artist, she is set apart from common women by her creativity and dedication to her craft: "with her red hair braided, her grey eyes wide and cold; he felt a strangeness about her, and a terrible fated loneliness." Similar isolation and extraordinary skill characterize most of the women in Katherine...
3. Beautiful Objects
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pp. 47-68
When Porter's Princess walked the streets of her father's kingdom, fascinated male onlookers "searched the folds of her robes with cautious stares, wishing their eyes were hands; and turned away, saying each one to himself, 'Not even the gods know what manner of woman is concealed in that robe!'" Curiosity, fear, and desire draw these male spectators to the Princess's armored...
4. Seeking the Mother Tongue
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pp. 69-96
In one fragment of "The Princess," Katherine Anne Porter's artist heroine describes the beauty she creates as both bodily and transcendent, both in her flesh and existing independently of it. "This is the beauty I have dreamed and made," she proclaims. "If you should strip me, you will find nothing but that beauty I have made . . . and if you kill me, you cannot destroy my dream." Generative...
5. A Little Stolen Holiday
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pp. 97-117
When the High Priestess and the gathered powers of her kingdom finally bring the Princess to trial for her unnatural crimes, the masked and bejeweled female artist responds with laughter. Proclaim the judges, "We accuse Her Royal Highness with the following offenses against the dignity of the throne, the peace and welfare of the sovereign realm, and the Temples of the most High Zerdah...
6. Rumors and Representations
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pp. 118-128
Made hopeful by the Princess's sudden willingness to marry the young acolyte, the Queen expresses her heartfelt wish, "May I live to dandle my grandchildren upon my knee." But the Chief of the Royal Council remains baffled by the Princess's strange vocation; he cannot understand why she would reject motherhood for her glittering and painful art. "Why" he asks, as have so many...
7. Romantic Love
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pp. 129-153
For a time, the acolyte in Katherine Anne Porter's "The Princess" proves the perfect lover for a woman artist. Although he longs for a physical expression of their love, this young man willingly subordinates his desires to his beloved's dreams. At their marriage altar, the Princess refuses to undress, to set aside her ornate and beautiful robes, her consummate works of art. Instead she turns to...
8. Gender and Costume
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pp. 154-177
As the Princess lies dead in the glimmering water, her protective costume slowly floats away: "the waves lipped back and forth over her heavy robes and the cold inert jewels . . . until softly, oh, softly they were loosened." Finally her body is uncovered, as it was before she undertook her sartorial arts. The people come to view her corpse, "naked and glistening" in the water, and find...
9. Southern Belle, Southern Lady
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pp. 178-197
Elaborately dressed and bejeweled, never stepping out of her role as the visionary virgin artist, the Princess becomes a living legend. Soon the people of her kingdom forget her past and see only her presence. As Porter writes, "She became even as she lived among them, a legend. There were many who professed that they could not remember her face." The transformation of a woman from...
10. No Safe Harbor
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pp. 198-214
Conversations between the Princess and the young acolyte follow a distinct pattern. He expresses his desire for her love; she responds with visionary decrees and another layer of glittering razor-sharp armor. Sexual obsession alternates with physical and emotional wounds. Brief, unconsummated, the marriage ends with her death, leaving a poet singing about "his faithful love, and her...
NOTES
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pp. 215-234
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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pp. 235-242
INDEX
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pp. 243-252
E-ISBN-13: 9780820330846
E-ISBN-10: 0820330841
Print-ISBN-13: 9780820327563
Print-ISBN-10: 0820327565
Page Count: 264
Illustrations: 3 b&w photos
Publication Year: 2005
