Josephine's photograph

The photograph Ava keeps of Josephine is a symbol of the connection the different generations of the women in the Jackson family share. The photograph is mentioned numerous times, so it is obviously of paramount significance to Ava, and when she looks at it, she finds herself capable of understanding the nuances of Josephine's expression. She says at one point, "Her husband had just died, and you could not miss that in her eyes, the loneliness. But you could also glimpse the pride: the rows of corn, their stalks double her height, the chickens at her feet" (3-4).Later she amends this: "She wasn't only lonely, she was afraid, of being by herself in a world that she had only started to manage with her husband beside her" (65). The reader sees throughout the chapters from Josephine's perspective that Ava's assessment of her grandmother's great grandmother...