SOURCE: "The 'Booby Trap' of Love: Artist and Sadist in Katherine Anne Porter's Mexico Fiction," in The Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 16, No. 4, Spring, 1990, pp. 617-34.

In the following essay, Titus explores sexuality, gender politics, and the objectification of women in Porter's early published and unpublished writing.

"Her eagerness to be beautiful in their eyes, to draw them to her, made her ache. Her nerve ends boiled and bubbled. But she kept her face calm as she watched them, serpent-feminine enough to know that her attitude of calm pleased them." Inscrutable without and turbulent within, Alma, the silent, erotic center of Katherine Anne Porter's unfinished story, "The Evening," resembles several of the female characters in Porter's 1920s Mexico fiction. "The Evening" belongs with four other early narratives, all originating in Porter's relationship with the Mexican artist community: "Flowering Judas" (published in 1930), "Virgin Violeta" (1924), "The Martyr" (1923), and its unpublished...