Three Unhappy Southern Women in Porter"s Miranda Stories

Three Unhappy Southern Women in Porter"s Miranda Stories

&nbsp;&nbsp;The South was dominated by the ideological concept in which Southern woman was conceived of as an embodiment of the standards of moral and social conduct, known as the Southern Lady. The Southern Lady was the moral vessel whose piety, modesty, and wisdom were the bulwark of the family. She was the tamer of men&quot;s brute instincts, the guardian of the young, and the source of religious values in the home and community. Ideally, she was also beautiful, charming, accomplished with music and needle, and submissive to her male masters.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;This paper examines how Porter interrogates the cult of Southern Lady and its traumatic history through the three unhappy Southern women&quot;s lives in "The Source," "The Old Order" and "Old Morality." Confined by a narrow definition of Southern womanhood, Miranda&quot;s grandmother, Amy, and Eva make radically opposing responses. One conforms to the conventional role of mother and wife; another attempts to escape the hardship of that role by death; the other takes painful steps to change it. Regardless of their different responses, it is nearly impossible for them to be happy in the moral and social repression of the male-dominated South.