Essay

Innocence of the Womb

Innocence is described as being free from moral wrong, without sin, pure; the common idea as being ‘innocent children,’ naive and ignorant. Katherine Anne Porter’s short story “The Grave” is a showcase of an ending of innocence and ignorance into understanding. Through the intricate use of symbolism and the allusion to the biblical tale—Adam and Eve—Porter relates the struggle of a young girl as she fumbles with her new understanding of her sexuality.

Porter’s instant jump to a scenic cemetery begins the Garden of Eden allusion. Her first description of the empty graveyard is of a “sweet-smelling neglected garden,” with many trees (306). This initial emphasis on the garden-like quality of a graveyard is surprising and disturbing, forging a link between the cemetery and Eden. While the children are rummaging around, “…aimlessly and pleasurable as any young animal,” (306) in the open graves Porter instills this representation of innocence through the description of careless animals; they are free and pure. Miranda and Paul discover two treasures while shuffling in the vacant pits, a gold ring and a silver dove.

The discovery of the symbolic gold ring and the silver dove is no accident. Porter’s clever introduction of these two objects enables Miranda to initially understand what it is to be a young lady. As she admires her new ring and recalls the old women with their corncob pipes who harshly reprimand her for wearing boys clothing: “‘Ain’t you ashamed of yoself, Missy? It’s against the Scriptures to dress like that. What yo Pappy thinkin about?’ Miranda…would feel ashamed because she knew well it was rude and ill-bred to shock anybody…” (307). The significance of this quotation is the shame she feels for her attire and how the beauty of the ring makes her wish to be more demure and ladylike. Also, Porter’s apt judgment of incongruity between the old women who smoke pipes and Miranda’s dress brings out the old adage ‘calling the kettle black.’ The importance of this symbolic advice-giving from one generation to the next identifies the difficulty of deciphering what it is to be a lady. She goes on: “Now the ring, shining with the serene purity of fine gold on her rather grubby thumb, turned her feelings against her overalls and sockless feet…” (308). Again there is the description of purity and finery contrasted by Miranda’s dirty thumb. Her change in attitude about her attire is brought fourth by this ring, just like the apple changed Adam and Eve. As Adam and Eve recognize they are naked, Miranda acknowledges that she is aware of the “shameful” quality of her dress.

The catalyst Porter implements is the death and improvised autopsy of a pregnant rabbit that brings about the full and sudden change in Miranda. As Paul slits open the womb carrying the lifeless fetuses Porter describes: “…there lay a bundle of tiny rabbits, each wrapped in a thin scarlet veil…like a baby’s head just washed, their unbelievably small delicate ears folded close, their little blind faces almost featureless” (308). The beauty and morbid quality in which Porter describes the baby rabbits enhances Miranda’s viewing of this scene. The mental picture of the scarlet veiled rabbit form is beautiful and is set very intricately in place for Miranda to make the connection that all life comes from mothers, from females, from women; maybe even from herself someday. “Oh, I want to see” (308) Miranda whispers. The emphasis Porter places on Miranda’s ‘see’ is inferred to mean that young Miranda wants know, and understand why the baby rabbits are there. Her quite realization is followed by a cold agitation through the discovery that she is connected to this mother rabbit. No longer is it genderless and a form of sport, the mother has an inexplicably primal connection to her. Porter beautifully states: “She understood a little of the secret, formless intuitions in her own mind and body, which had been clearing up, taking form, so gradually and so steadily she has not realized that she was learning what she had to know” (308). The intuitions in her mind and body highlight the link from female to female no matter the species. By this cold reality we can see her relationship with Eve directly after she took that bite from the apple. Knowledge courses through them both and they recognize this idea of knowing, of faded ignorance.

Porter’s use of the allusion to Adam and Eve provide this inherent connection everyone can identify with. They are the moments in life where nothing will ever be as uncomplicated as it was before that altering event. Miranda’s discovery and connection to her sexuality welcome her to the ranks of womanhood, not only its pretty ‘gold ring’ like times, but the instances where the essence of life is seated inside, and impending. This identity as a woman is striking, and the instinctive qualities amplify the altruistic sense that all females are linked throughout nature and time.