Pale Horse Miranda

Similar to Porter when Barbara Thompson asked her, in the interview held in Paris 1963, if there is “something comparable to the experience of Miranda in ‘Pale Horse, Pale Riders,’” she replied “the plague of influenza …It took me long time to go out and live in the world again” (Porter and Givner 85). During the period sickness Adam takes care of her mostly. After she is fully recovered, she realizes that Adam was infected by influenza and died by it. Porter later proclaimed that “the real ‘Adam’ was named Alexander Barclay and was the only man she truly loved (BOLLINGER 369).
Pale Horse, Pale Riders opens with dreams and memories. Miranda wakes up from a nightmare dream of riding pale horse and memories of ancestors. She works voluntarily
on nursing soldiers which is obligatory work for women during wartime, but she does not like it. Miranda represent southern classical women, who is beautiful, good dancer, besides being hard worker, she takes good care of her beauty. Miranda rebels the way she want. She is not like obedient women of her time. Towney is her close friend at work. They both “hold nontraditional jobs, for both have become reports, an occupation generally held by men (Titus 163).
In the story Adam is a stranger to the community, not Miranda as the case with Laurel in The Optimist Daughter , but Miranda likes to be in Adam’s company “Miranda decided there was no good in thinking of yesterday, except for the hours after midnight she has spent dancing with Adam. He was in her mind so much, she hardly knew when she was thinking about him directly” (Porter 277). And much like Laurel, Miranda does not want to think about past and find herself encountering with her community. “She is a career woman, she smoke openly, she speaks with savvy modern irony, and she is onto the falsity of values surrounding her” (Stout 112). Similar to Laurel, Miranda stays silent at the beginning when other character disturbs her or tries to change her such as old man, who asks her rudely why you “had not bought a Liberty Bond” (Porter 272). Miranda knows she can answer him accordingly, but she chooses to be silent instead: “Be quiet, Miranda told herself, this was bound to happen. Sooner or later it happens. Keep your head” (Porter 272). Catherine Himmelwright argues that: “Controlling her speech, Miranda is able to gain some control of herself and of the situation” (728). Part of her silent is the lack of capability to break strict rules imposed by the culture and society. The “[s]ocial pressure is so powerful that these young women fear resisting the requisite bedside flirtation with the troops” (Titus 162).During her volunteer work on serving soldiers, Miranda carried “her wilting bouquet and her basket of sweets and cigarettes” (Porter 276). After she observes different men that are injured from war, she puts the whole basket on one bed and come out. Then she makes herself promise that, “never again will I come here, this is no sort of thing to be doing”(Porter 277). In struggling with local community during her work as a reporter, she proclaims: “I wish I could lose my memory and forget my own name” (Porter 289). She is fed up about the way other treats her.
Miranda and Adam meets regularly, they care much about each other. One day Miranda wakes up and she is seriously ill. She needs to be taken to hospital but no hospital has any available bed to receive patients in that moment. Adam takes the responsibility to take care of her for twenty four hours until an ambulance come to take her to hospital. They shares romantic moments together, Adam disregards the risk he is taking in doing that. The way of nursing Miranda emasculate Adam as Roger Platisky states: “Adam’s masculinity is tempered when he nurses Miranda through her bout with influenza at the risk of his own health. In addition, as he is ministering to her, Miranda unexpectedly tells Adam, ‘I think you are very beautiful’” (3).
When Miranda wake up from her sickness, she realizes that Adam is dead by influenza.
She blames herself for his death as she expects the sickness to be transferred from her. During these moments, she begins to think of past and she is haunted by Adam’s ghost, similar to Laurel in The Optimist Daughter, who is haunted by memories of her mother and husband during her father’s funeral days. Miranda begins to think of herself in tradition values, she asks Towney for: “One Lipstick, medium, one ounce falsk Biois d’Hiver perfume, one pair of gray suede gauntlets without straps, two pairs gray sheer stocking without clocks … One walking stick of silvery wood with a silver knob” (Porter
316).
As the tradition southern women who preserves their beauty. She is going to be cheerful and belle with showing better respect for the community and survivor of war. She says: “I shall be glad when I hear that someone I know has escaped from death. I shall visit … help them and tell them how lucky they are, and how lucky I am still to have them” (Porter 317). Miranda thinks of Adam and wishes for staying with him eternally, she says: “At once he was there beside her, invisible but urgently present, a ghost but more alive than she was, the last intolerable cheat of her heart; for knowing it was false she still clung to the lie, the unpardonable lie of her bitter desire” (Porter 317). David A Davis argues that, “she cannot repress his memory, and she finds herself torn between her desire to be with his spirit and her desire to spare him, and herself, more pain” (68).
Like Laurel, Miranda could not diverge herself fully from the past. She finds herself attached to the memories of Adam. “Porter makes it clear that Miranda hates her work, but at this point Miranda does not seem able to reject her family’s romanticized vision of death (Iuchi 162). Miranda says “If I could call you up from the grave I would, if I could see your ghost I would say, I believe” (Porter 317). But instead of keep hoping on the past to return, she suddenly shifts her way of thinking about past and begins to future. She gives up all the past and what belonging of memories, the narrator describes: “She came to herself as if out of sleep” and then Miranda says: “Oh, no, that is not the way, I must never do that, she warned herself” (Porter 317). Janis P Stout proclaims: “ When she experiences a compelling hallucination of Adam’s return but rejects such a willed summoning of the dead as a temptation to madness, she fully and finally reject the myth of romantic love and then dresses the solemn part she expect to play” (116).
Miranda turns again the traditional role of female as domestic and obedient to become more masculine and independent.
Overall, Laura who is a female protagonist The Optimistic Daughter leaves her hometown when she is child and return for her father’s funeral. She is shocked by the behavior of her father’s new wife, Fry who married Laura’s father to gain wealth. Fry does not try to assimilate herself with her husband’s community and culture at the same time she tries to ignore her own identity and traditions. Meanwhile, Laura who tries to respects her tradition but being away from her townhome creates a gap in her understanding of traditions. She could not feel the way people of her hometown feel for their
past.
Eventually, Laura attempts to sit with Fry and understand her, but Fry’s ignorance and stubborn prevent her from mutual understanding. But Fay’s selfishness toward the community in general and toward Laurel in specific, helps her to examine her identity and to pay closer attention to the family memories. Fay basically tries to ruin all the relation especially when she controls the household of the family. There is no indication that Laurel has ever tries to use the memories of the family before meeting Fay. She could preserve the breadboard if it has a real symbol for her