Strohmer has a Ph.D. in English literature and has written widely on English, European, and American literature. In the following essay, she discusses Porter's use of the grotesque in "The Grave."

Many of Katherine Anne Porter's Miranda stories present grotesque images, especially grotesque interpretations of female bodies. In those misshapen and sometimes tortured bodies, we can see the results of restrictive and sometimes fatal cultural codes for Southern women. However, these stories also depict grotesque images of women that suggest the possibility of escaping these roles by re-creating the grotesque, not as deformed or unspeakable, but as beautiful and worth celebrating. In these stories, Porter inverts grotesque images of women that have suppressed them and reinvents those images to give women power.

"The Grave" provides a clear example of how Porter adapts the grotesque to her own unique purposes. In this final story from "The Old...