While her own tenacity never lets her down, men always seem to lack Granny's staying power. Because she has been abandoned by two men, one because he did not marry her, another because he died young, Granny cannot believe in the certainty of her future salvation through the vehicle of a male figure. The fact that she has had to assume the role of man and woman is underlined: "I pay my own bills," she says. "In her day she had kept a better house and had got more work done. She wasn't too old yet for Lydia to be driving eighty miles for advice when one of the children jumped the track, and Jimmy still dropped in and talked things over: 'Now, Mammy, you've a good business head, I want to know what you think of this?…' Old. Cornelia couldn't change the furniture around without asking ."

Although the...
[ View Full Essay]