In this series, which will go through October and possibly into November, we will read and discuss some of Father Ryan's favorite Flannery O'Connor short stories.
Course objectives: To appreciate Flannery O’Connor as a Catholic and as a grotesque writer of the American South. To recognize her unique contribution to Catholic thought in the United States. Finally, to learn to enjoy the writings of this exquisite and strange young woman.
Listen online [here]!
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Flannery
O’Connor
Session 1,
Introduction to the Catholic Writer of the American South
“The
truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
Course objectives: To appreciate
Flannery O’Connor as a Catholic and as a grotesque writer of the American
South. To recognize her unique contribution to Catholic thought in the United
States. Finally, to learn to enjoy the writings of this exquisite and strange
young woman.
I. Biographical Notes
Born 25 March 1925, Mary Flannery O’Connor in Savannah, Georgia.
Died 3 August 1964 (age 39) in
Milledgeville, Georgia.
Raised as an only child in an
Irish Catholic home, surrounded by the protestant south. Her father died of the
autoimmune disease, lupus, in 1941 when she was only fifteen.
In 1946 (age 21), she was
accepted into Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, from which she
received her degree in 1947. Her first short story The Geranium was
published in 1946. By 1947 she had begun working on what would be her first
novel, Wise Blood. Four stories which would later be incorporated into
the novel were published separately in 1948 and 1949, while the novel itself
was published in 1952.
Her first published collection of
short stories was A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories in 1955.
Ultimately, she wrote two novels, thirty-two short stories, and numerous
letters, essays, reviews, etc.
Flannery was diagnoses with lupus
in 1950, and suffered horribly from this disease through the remaining years of
her life. Because of the illness, she was ultimately forced to return home
where she could receive care from her mother – she was often only able to work
two or three hours a day.
Her second novel The Violent
Bare It Away was published in 1960, and was the last work published before her
death. In 1965, a second collection of her short stories was published under
the title Everything That Rises Must Converge. In 1971, The Complete
Stories of Flannery O’Connor was published, and went on to wine the
National Book Award.
II. Synopsis of the stages of her
literary growth
Her writing career can be divided
into four five-year periods of increasing skill and ambition, 1945 to 1964:
1) Postgraduate Student: Iowa Writers' Workshop, first
published stories, drafts of Wise Blood. Literary influences include
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James
2) Early: Wise Blood completed and published. In this
period, satirical elements dominate. Influences include Jacques Maritain
3) Middle: A Good Man Is Hard to Find published, The
Violent Bear It Away written and published. Influences include Friedrich
von Hügel. In this period, the mystical undercurrents begin to have primacy.
4) Mature: Everything That Rises Must Converge written.
Influences include Pierre Teilhard de Chardin* and Mary Anne Long. In this
period, the notion of grotesque is expanded to include the good as grotesque,
and the grotesque as good.
*Note that de Chardin is a very
bad theologian who was highly influenced by modernism and even New Age.
However, Flannery shows no signs of having been misled in these ways, and even
would describe herself as a conservative “13th Century
Catholic.” Her bedside reading was the
Summa of St Thomas Aquinas.
III. Some of the themes of her literary
works
A. Grotesque: This is the word
most often used to describe the writings of Flannery O’Connor. And, that she is
part of the “Southern Gothic.” She was not particularly impressed with either
classification and once said, “anything that comes out of the South is going to
be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which
case it is going to be called realistic.”
Her stories do focus on morally
flawed and highly enigmatic or even disturbing characters. She would say of her
writings, “The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing
harder or less sentimental than Christian realism. ...When I see these stories
described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has
hold of the wrong horror.”
B. In her Catholic Vision of the
world, she saw all reality as sacramental and pointing towards the greatness of
God. Thus, her stories are revelatory –
pulling back the veil which covers the surface of experience to peer deep into
the hidden workings of the human soul.
C. Moments of grace are often
accompanied by violence - for although grace is always offered, it is often
rejected. As many will say, for Flannery
O’Connor grace is a violent thing. She would say, “This notion that grace is
healing omits the fact that before it heals, it cuts with the sword Christ said
He came to bring.” This is a strong contradiction of the Holy Roller preaching
common in the South – that grace will make everything in life easy and happy.
Rather, Flannery knows as a Catholic that grace means the grace to pick up the
cross daily. She says, “There is a
moment of grace in most of the stories, or a moment where it is offered, and
usually rejected.”
D. North-South relations,
education, and progress: It becomes very clear that Flannery O’Connor is
suspicious of the North, and of northerners telling southerners how to run the
south. Tied to this is the suspicion she
has of city life as opposed to rural culture. Likewise, she never seems to be
much impressed by college degrees, especially when an “educated” person decided
he knows best how the “uneducated” should live their lives. Flanner is
especially opposed to an idea of progress which would mean setting aside the
faith and traditional values for the sake of modern economics or scientific
advancement. Her suspicion of the
universities is seen in the answer she gave when asked whether the universities
stifle writers, “I think they don’t stifle enough of them.”
E. Racial tensions: Although
Flannery did advocate for racial justice and was in favor of the civil rights
movement, she was of the south and was again suspicious of northerners telling
the south how to handle race problems.
She was in favor of integration, but seems to have advocated a slower
and more moderate approach to righting those wrongs than did the more radical
civil rights leaders. Her stories occasionally make use of racial slang
(including the N-word), but you will notice that the blacks in her stories are
never presented as second class citizens and the white folk who are most racist
are always presented in a poor light.
Still, many will criticize Flannery for how she handles some of these
issues – while she is not entirely beyond all reproach, we should remember that
she was ahead of her time and place, and that her writings are never easy to
interpret but require great reflection.
F. Sense of humor: Flannery has a
fierce sense of humor, which is often quite biting or even sarcastic. A simple
quote illustrates this well, “I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other
cheek, as my tongue is always in it.”
G. Note that her stories almost
never deal with explicitly Catholic themes. She is writing in the protestant
south, and there weren’t many Catholics there for her to write about. Three
stories that have explicit reference to Catholic elements are: Temple of the
Holy Ghost, The Enduring Chill, and The Displaced Person. Still, all of her stories are filled with the
Catholic Faith and the Catholic Vision of life and death.
IV. Some images that are often
used by Flannery O’Connor
A. The tree line: The woods, the
tree line, the forest all often stand for heaven, hell, death and judgment.
They stand for the supernatural over and above the natural world.
B. Water: Water often evokes
baptism and rebirth, but likewise death and burial.
C. Peacocks or other birds: Often
represent Christ or the Christian Gospel.
D. The Sky: Heaven.
E. A Woman’s Hat: Often
symbolizes her social status or her self-importance and pride.
V. The Faith of Flannery O’Connor
A letter to Cecil Dawkins on July
16, 1957:
“I think that the reason such
Catholics are so repulsive is that they don’t really have faith but a kind of
false certainty. They operate by the slide rule and the Church for them is not
the body of Christ but the poor man’s insurance system. It’s never hard for
them because they never think about it. Faith has to take in all the other
possibilities it can…. In any case, discovering the Church is apt to be a slow
procedure but it can only take place if you have a free mind and no vested
interest in disbelief.”
