Year of Publication
2025
College
Undergraduate Education
Department
English
Abstract
Katherine Anne Porter’s short novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider, published as part of a story collection in 1939, was a seminal work in the genre of modern pandemic literature. It was one of the first novels to be written about the 1918 influenza epidemic, and its semiautobiographical candor and compelling storyline established it as a paragon of the pandemic tragedy. This thesis explores the intersection between literature and history by examining the relationship between Porter’s short novel and a collection of letters written between a young woman and her beau (Rosa Kuhn and Thus Duncan, residents of the now-defunct Land Between the Rivers in rural Western Kentucky) during the Spanish flu pandemic. At first glance, Rosa’s life seems strikingly similar to that of Miranda, the character through whom Katherine Anne Porter conveys her experiences in Pale Horse, Pale Rider: both women were in their 20s, both had affinities for creative pursuits (especially writing), and both attempted to juggle romantic connections with their myriad troubles in the year 1918. Regardless, Kuhn’s pandemic letters and Porter’s short novel remain separated by the profusion of overt optimism in Rosa’s writing and the ostensible dearth thereof in Katherine’s. Rosa’s experiences, when paralleled with Katherine Anne Porter’s as explored in Pale Horse, Pale Rider, exemplify the disparate reactions of two apparently similar women faced with the same challenges. At the same time, it reminds readers that outward anguish does not always equate total hopelessness, just as discernible optimism usually veils a vein of disillusion. The latter half of the thesis interrogates the implications of comparing a set of letters to a fictionalized autobiography and argues for the analytical compatibility of fiction, autobiography, and historical sources through a new historicist framework; only together, it ultimately asserts, can the dependent genres form a full representation of the era they present.
Recommended Citation
Brown-Terry, Ella J., "Two Women, a War, and a Pandemic: A Comparative Analysis of Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider and Rosa Kuhn's Pandemic Letters" (2025). Gaines Fellow Senior Theses. 32.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gaines_theses/32
