Pale Horse, Pale Rider (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Katherine Anne Porter
- First Published: 1938
- Type of Work: Novellas
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Short fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: Family or family life, North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Parents and children, Love or romance, Suicide, Murder or homicide, South or Southerners, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Marriage, Guilt, West, U.S., Emotions, Reality, War, Farms, farmers, or farming, New Orleans, Death or dying, World War I, Hallucinations or illusions, Colorado, Southwest, Soldiers, Suffrage or voting rights, Life and death, Romanticism, Reporting or reporters, Texas, Horses, Women’s rights, Influenza, Racing
- Locales: South (U.S.), New Orleans, LA, Colorado, Texas
Form and Content
These short novels—“Old Mortality,” “Noon Wine,” and “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”—vary considerably in form, but all are realistic and are concerned primarily with death and its effects on the living. “Old Mortality” is a kind of family chronicle in which two motherless girls, Miranda and Maria, grow up surrounded by a family which romanticizes some of its members. The chief subject of romantic memory is Aunt Amy, a beautiful and wild young woman who consistently rejected the advances of Gabriel, her chief suitor, and refused to allow illness to...
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