Betrayal
Betrayal is front and center as a theme running throughout the stories in this collection. At its most abstract is the ideological betrayal of the Mexican people by the revolutionaries in “Hacienda.” At its most symbolic is the presentation to Laura of the fruit of the Judas tree which brings the title story to an end. The Judas tree, is of course, the international symbol of betrayal while “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” bears in its very title one of the most excruciating acts of betrayal between men and women for millennia. The young woman who is the victim of “Theft” is also the victim of a minor act of betrayal of trust while “Maria Concepcion” is the victim of a crushing act of betrayal compounded.
Submissive Men/Dominant Women
Though not a pervasive as the theme of betrayal, an unusually robust thematic treatment of women being dominant in relationships with men marks the stories in this collection. One might well argue that “Maria Concepcion” does not this theme too well since the young wife at its center must endure the pain and humiliation of her husband running off with an even younger girl, yet in the end he is back home, Maria has murdered his lover and replaced the child she lost with the illegitimate offspring of that union. The clearest recurrences of men being weaker than women are the male protagonists of “The Martyr” and “That Tree” who are portrayed as essentially spineless pawns of their designing heroines. “The Cracked Looking Glass” is somewhat more subtle in its implication of men as the weaker sex as the husband is not directly inscribed as submissive, but through the wife’s action and the precision of lack of important in the narrative, he is ultimately exposed.
A Journey to Self-Awareness
Porter’s most famous story is about the stream-of-consciousness journey through time that Granny Weatherall makes to arrive at a moment of self-awareness just before her death. This same motif is recurs in other ways in many of the stories presented. The true value of virginity becomes apparent to Violeta only after coming face to face with the possibility of realizing a romantic dream. The self-deception made manifest in a broken mirror progresses from misapprehended symbol to symbol of true self-knowledge after an ill-fated visit to Boston. Although a dominant them in many of the stories, this of epiphany is most clearly defined by “Theft” which ends with the protagonist thinking to herself “I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.” This most of intense self-awareness also becomes the collection’s most bitter betrayal of all: the recognition that she has betrayed herself more than she’s been betrayed by anyone else. The most painful story of self-awareness, however, is likely “That Tree” which is dominated by this theme and which finally concludes with the collection’s longest trek toward the most unwanted of epiphanies: that its protagonist is and has been all along a total fraud.
