The Cracked Looking Glass by Katherine Anne Porter
The Cracked Looking Glass by Katherine Anne Porter
Another version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- What is the significance of the title?
- I was thinking about that.
A simple answer would just mention the Cracked Looking Glass that the heroine wants to change.
- But isn't this a metaphor?
- Perhaps Rosaleen, the main character sees the world
- Through A Glass Darkly,
Like in the famed Scandinavian masterpiece.
From the start, we learn that her husband, Dennis is upset with her continuous talking.
When she's not talking to humans, she talks to her cats.
There is a rift that seems to be growing between husband and wife.
Dennis is about thirty years older and Rosaleen is his second wife.
He wishes she was his first and only spouse, but he is also annoyed with her aforementioned verbosity and some her ways.
The considerable age difference does not help.
He is beginning to act like an old man, but Rosaleen is not faultless either.
She keeps talking about her extravagant dreams and apparitions.
In one, a Billy- cat they had disappeared, only to come after three days and Tell her where he died.
He was caught in a trap, retrieved and buried next to his home.
But the idea of the talking cat sounds preposterous and aggravates Dennis even more when it is told to a salesman.
That salesman is another grievance, for the husband hears Rosaleen with her tall tales:
My husband is not in his best form, but in his day he could beat up anyone and throw in the dust. He would take them out afterwards, but he was so powerful!!
Dennis is thinking in the other room how he has always been tall and thin and barely had one confrontation in his life...
Words to that effect, I do not quote what either of them was thinking or saying.
Rosaleen is buying things from this smooth operator and her husband is not happy with that either.
One night, she has a dream about her sister being really sick and decides to travel. To Boston.
One thing I liked about Dennis is that throughout these experiences, strange dreams and impossible claims he thinks one thing, but he says what is expected.
He never dismisses the absurd allegations, even if we "hear" him saying to himself
That is nonsense
In Boston, Rosaleen is disappointed and then outraged.
First, the dream proves to be just that and not an accurate information.
The sister is nowhere to be found, never mind cared for or helped.
Then she meets this destitute Irish young man, for whom she feels compassion.
Both Rosaleen and her husband are Irish, living on a farm in Connecticut.
Impressed with the story of this poor man, she offers him a meal and gives him ten dollars, an important sum in those days.
She even invites him to come and work, and live with them.
To this, her interlocutor says something like:
Oh, that is dangerous, I met this fair lady, just like you and it was so strange, with her husband looking all the time through the key hole...
Overwhelmed, Rosaleen puts this offender in his place.
This is a complex, dazzling short story.
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