Flannery O’Connor is viewed as one of America’s most prominent fiction writers and perhaps the most grounded defender for Roman Catholicism in the twentieth century. Born of the marriage of two of Georgia’s most seasoned Catholic families, O’Connor was an ardent devotee whose little yet great assemblage of fiction presents the spirit’s battle with what she called the smelling frantic shadow of Jesus.
On March 25, 1925, Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia on 25 March 1925. She was born to Edward and Regina O’Connor. In 1938 the family came to Milledgeville, Georgia, where her dad died three years after from foundational lupus. This disease was the ailment that would in the long run end her life as well. During her secondary school years, she went to the Peabody Laboratory School and after went to its associate school, Georgia State College for Women.
In the wake of getting her degree there in Social Studies, she at that point proceeded onward to the University of Iowa for a degree in Creative Writing. In 1946 her first short story, ‘The Geranium’, was published, denoting the start of her expert composing vocation.
After her graduation, she lived in various zones of the United States as a part of the scholarly network. In 1951, she came back to her family in Andalusia in Milledgeville in the wake of being diagnosed to have lupus. She stayed there till her death composing both of her books,’ Wise Blood’ (1952), and ‘The Violent Bear it Away’ (1960), just as a significant number of her short stories. She was a productive correspondent, just as heading out to give numerous talks on writing until capitulating to lupus in 1964 at the age of thirty-nine.
She was a Southern author who regularly wrote in a harsh Southern Gothic style and depended intensely on provincial settings and peculiar characters, frequently in savage circumstances. The unsentimental acknowledgment or dismissal of the constraints or flaws or distinction of these characters normally supports the drama.
Her composing mirrored her Roman Catholic confidence and as often as possible analyzed inquiries of profound quality and morals. Her after death compiled ‘Complete Stories’ won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and has been the subject of suffering recognition.
A Short Biography of Flannery O’Connor
Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia on 25th March 1925. She was the daughter of Edward Francis O`Connor and Regina Cline. She was the only child of her parents. Her father was a real estate agent. Her parents were basically from Ireland. During her childhood, she attended the city`s parochial school.
In 1940, she moved along with her family to Milledgeville. They started living on Andalusia Farm. This farm is now a museum. It has been dedicated to the works of O`Connor. Her father suffered from systemic lupus erythematosus. He died of this disease in 1941. After the death of her father, she continued to live with her mother in the village Milledgeville.
She got admitted to Peabody High School. In this school, she worked as editor of the art section in the school’s newspaper. She graduated from this school in 1942. She then joined Georgia State College for Women. It is now Georgia College and State University. She graduated from this college in 1945. She received the degree of a B.A. in English literature and sociology from this college. During her stay at college, she produced a good amount of cartoon works in the student newspaper.
She was an eager reader and craftsman. She worked as editorial manager of the ‘Corinthian,’ GSCW’s school scholarly magazine, and as a cartoon artist. O’Connor gave cartoons about each issue for the newspaper. She also provided cartoons for the school yearbook and for the Corinthian, just as for the walls of the students` lounge. Generally critical, she contributed fiction, articles, and poems to the ‘Corinthian.’
These works exhibited at an early stage her propensity for parody and satire. She had done a sociology major with various courses in English and is recalled by her colleagues as clearly talented yet incredibly modest. Her dearest companions review her shrewd humor, her contempt for average quality, and her frequently cruel assaults on gesture and technicality.
O’Connor’s thesis for masters was an assortment of short stories entitled ‘The Geranium.’ The title work having just become her story ‘Accent,’ that got published in1946. Most stories in this assortment were crafted by a student looking for her own domain and voice. They propose just faintly the sharp mind, finely sharpened style, and otherworldly extent of O’Connor’s full-grown work. “The Turkey” most really shows the noteworthy association among language and conviction that came to invade O’Connor’s work.
This story additionally uncovers her ear for southern vernacular and imprints one of her first endeavors at the artistic incongruity for which she later got renowned.
She entered into the Iowa Writers` Workshop. This was at the University of Iowa. There she studied journalism. During her stay at the university, she met a number of important writers who taught her and delivered lectures in the program. She started writing fiction and it was very much appreciated by the editor of the Sewanee Review. They also published a number of her short stories as well. The director of the workshop, Paul Engle, read the initial drafts of ‘Wise Blood.’ In 1947, she completed her M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa. Afterwards, she worked on ‘Wise Blood’ at Yadoo. It was a community of artists in Saratoga Springs in New York. There she completed a number of short stories as well.
In 1949, she got a chance to meet Robert Fitzgerald. She was invited to stay with them. She accepted the invitation and started living with the family of Fitzgerald in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
She is very much famous for her short stories. She has published two volumes of short stories. The first one is ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find.’ It was published in 1955. The second volume is ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge.’ It was published posthumously in 1965. A number of her short stories have been re-published in various anthologies.
She has also written two novels. The first one is ‘Wise Blood.’ It was published in 1952. The second novel is ‘The Violent Bear It Away.’ It was published in 1960. ‘Wise Blood’ was filmed by John Houston.
There is also an incomplete manuscript of her third novel ‘Why Do the Heathen Rage?’ She could not complete this novel.
The writing career of O`Connor is divided into four periods of five years. This takes the period from 1945 to 1964.
The first period is when she completed her graduation and was very much influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James. In this period, she published her first short stories and started working on the drafts of ‘Wise Blood.’
The second period is when she completed her first novel ‘Wise Blood.’ In this period, she was influenced by Jacques Maritain. Her works of this period are marked by satirical elements.
In the third period, she published the two collections of short stories. These include ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ and The Violent Bear It Away.’ In this period, she was influenced by Friedrich Von Hugel. The works of this period are dominated by mystical undercurrents.
The fourth period is known for publishing ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge.’ During this period, she was influenced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Marry Anne Long. The works of this period are famous for the inclusion of grotesque elements.
In 1952, she was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus. This was the same disease that had taken the life of her father. When this disease was diagnosed, she decided to return to her family. She came back to Andalusia in Milledgeville. She started living with her family on the family farm. After the disease was diagnosed, she lived for 12 years afterward.
After the suffering of the disease started, she changed her complete routine. She would write in the morning and then read the whole day. Despite the fact that her health was deteriorating, she appeared in more than sixty appearances to read her works in front of people.
During this period of suffering, she completed a number of short stories and novels. She embraced death on 3rd August 1964 when she was 39 years old. She died in Baldwin County Hospital. Before her death, she underwent surgery for a Fibroma. This caused a complication and she was attacked by lupus. Her dead body is buried in Memory Hill Cemetery at Milledgeville, Georgia.
During her life, she had a wide range of correspondence with a number of writers and playwrights. These include; Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Marryat Lee. After her death, Sally Fitzgerald, the wife of Fitzgerald, published her letters as ‘The Habit of Being.’ These letters contain the best thoughts of O`Connor regarding religion and writing in these letters.
In 1955, Betty Hester who was a file clerk of Atlanta sent a letter to O`Connor. In that letter, Betty Hester had expressed her respect and admiration for the writings of O`Connor. After receiving the letter, there developed a strong correspondence between the two. When Sally Fitzgerald was publishing the letters of O`Connor as ‘The Habit of Being,’ Hester provided her with the letters of O`Connor. She also requested Sally not to reveal her identity while publishing the letters. Thus her identity was kept as ‘A.’ In 2007, Emory University unveiled the edited letter written between Betty Hester and O`Connor. In 1987, the university received these letters. One of the terms for these letters was that these would not be made public for 20 years.
Emory University has more than six-hundred letters of O`Connor. These letters are written by O`Connor to her mother Regina. These letters were written by O`Connor on a daily basis in which she has revealed her developments in a literary career. These letters also have her small wishes in which she has asked her mother for homemade mayonnaise. She has talked about her school life, her travels, and mishaps. She remained very close to her mother and had spent around 34 years with her mother in her 39 years of life.
O`Connor remained a devout Catholic Christian. In Georgia, she wrote more than a hundred reviews for Catholic Diocesan newspapers. This was from 1956 to 1964. These newspapers include ‘The Bulletin and ‘The Southern Cross.’
Flannery O’Connor’s Writing Style
O’Connor’s style is best portrayed as ‘southern gothic’, which is a style of writing that has defective and upset characters in evil circumstances. Her composing investigates religion and profound quality, and frequently how the two terribly impact.
Beside her southern settings and mentally upset characters, readers of O’Connor have generally expected unusual and stunning turns, just as a magnificent utilization of foretelling. For instance, her short story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’, starts with a grandma fearing a family excursion and utilizing the account of a got away from killer to retreat from it. This occurs inside the initial barely any sentences and motions toward the reader dark what might be on the horizon.
Despite the fact that huge numbers of her accounts start in reasonable settings, similar to a homestead or a family home, her composing style doesn’t fall under realism. For instance, her story ‘A Stroke of Good Fortune’ happens in a basic loft flight of stairs. However, as the fundamental character Ruby climbs the steps, the story turns out to be increasingly strange and commonality vacates the premises.
Composing during the social and racial changes overcoming the south, O’Connor used these strains in her work, implanting it regularly into her characters. Her utilization of racial parody was intended for stun esteem, and not to be fully trusted, however, some have come to condemn her racial slurs as simply that. In the biography, ‘Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor’ by Brad Gooch, O’Connor is uncovered to be a somewhat feisty lady and not one to surrender to the run of the mill southern ringer quirks. Despite the fact that she was a supporter of equivalent rights, she was known to thoroughly enjoy making bigot wisecracks, particularly to her dissident companions.
Grotesque
The main characteristic of O`Connor`s writing style is her notion of the grotesque style of writing. As to the accentuation of the grotesque, O’Connor stated that whatever comes out of the South will be called peculiarly grotesque by the northern audience, except if it is grotesque, in which case it will be described as realistic. Her writings for the most part occur in the South and rotate around ethically imperfect characters. These characters are every now and again interfacing with individuals with disabilities or impaired themselves while the issue of race frequently shows up in the background.
The greater part of her work highlights upsetting components. However, she didn’t care to be portrayed as pessimistic. She stated that she was compellingly worn out on perusing reviews that call ‘A Good Man’ severe and wry. The narratives were hard yet they were hard in light of the fact that there was not much or less nostalgic than Christian authenticity. At the point when she saw these accounts depicted as loathsomeness stories, she was constantly delighted on the grounds that the analyst consistently has held an inappropriate horror.
Divine Elegance in Style
She felt profoundly educated by the sacrosanct and by the Thomist thought that made the world accused of God. However, she would not compose apologetic fiction of the sort pervasive in the Catholic writing of the time, clarifying that an author’s importance must be clear in their fiction without instruction. She composed unexpected, inconspicuously symbolic fiction about misleadingly backward Southern characters, generally fundamentalist Protestants.
These characters experience changes of character that carried them closer to the Catholic psyche. The change is frequently cultivated through torment, brutality, and crazy conduct in the quest for the heavenly. Anyway bizarre the setting, she attempted to depict her characters as open to the pinch of heavenly elegance. This precluded a nostalgic comprehension of the accounts’ viciousness, as of her own disease. She stated that elegance transforms us and the change is painful.
Sense of Humor
She had a profoundly cynical comical inclination. This was frequently situated in the dissimilarity between her characters’ constrained recognitions and the amazing destiny anticipating them. Another wellspring of amusingness is every now and again found in the endeavor of benevolent dissidents to adapt to the rural South on their own terms. O’Connor utilized such characters’ powerlessness to grapple with incapacity, race, destitution, and fundamentalism, other than in nostalgic figments, for instance of the disappointment of the mainstream world in the twentieth century.
Contemporary Social Issues
In any case, in a few stories, O’Connor investigated the absolute most delicate contemporary issues that her liberal and fundamentalist characters may experience. She tended to the Holocaust in her story “The Displaced Person”, racial coordination in “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and intersexuality in “A Temple of the Holy Ghost.” Her fiction frequently remembered references to the issue of race for the South. At times, racial issues go to the forefront, as in “The Artificial Nigger,” “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” and “Day of atonement.”
Regardless of her detached life, her composing uncovers an uncanny handle of the subtleties of human conduct. O’Connor gave numerous talks on trust and writing, voyaging very far in spite of her delicate wellbeing. Strategically, she kept up an extensively dynamic standpoint regarding her confidence. She decided in favor of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and supported crafted by Martin Luther King Jr. and the social liberties movement.
Unconventional Writer
The body of O’Connor’s work opposes customary depiction. A large number of her accounts start in the natural quotidian world like on a family vacation or in a specialist’s sitting area, for instance. But these are not reasonable and absolutely not in the feeling of the southern authenticity of William Faulkner or Erskine Caldwell. Besides, despite the fact that O’Connor’s work was composed during a period of incredible social change in the South, those changes were not at the focal point of her fiction. O’Connor utilized brutality and stun strategies.
She contended that she composed for a group of people who didn’t share her faith in the fall of humankind and its requirement for recovery. She stated that to the in need of a hearing aide Christian writers yell, and for the nearly blind they drew enormous and frightening figures. This was an explanation that had become a brief and well-known clarification of O’Connor’s conscious goal as an author.
O’Connor had understood Faulkner and Caldwell Caroline Gordon, and Katherine Anne Porter and other southern authors. Faulkner and Porter were solid impacts, as were Nathaniel Hawthorne and the French essayists Georges Bernanos and François Mauriac. These last four fortified O’Connor’s accentuation on unique sin, blame, and estrangement, particularly as she concentrated on the twentieth-century inclination to discover in innovation and in “progress” the panacea to life’s ills. Despite the fact that O’Connor realized that she like her initial model T. S. Eliot was in the minority in her hatred for the expanding secularism of her time, she would not withdraw.
Quest of God: A Central Point in her Writing
O’Connor was a Roman Catholic in the Bible Belt South. Her fiction is generally worried about fundamentalist Protestants, a considerable lot of whom she respected for the respectability of their quest for Truth. The distribution of her papers and talks ‘Mystery and Manners’ published in 1969 and ‘The Habit of Being’ affirmed the solid association between O’Connor’s anecdotal treatment of the quest for God and the journey for the sacred in her own life.
Without a doubt, her life and work were of a piece. She accomplished in her concise life what Sally Fitzgerald called the propensity for being. Fitzgerald portrayed this as the greatness of activity as well as of inside attitude and action that attempted to mirror the decency and love of God.
It is beneficial to take note of that Flannery O’Connor was a dedicated Catholic, and thus, her compositions have numerous unpretentious feelings of her religious feelings. In any case, it never slips into the silly wistfulness that has stamped purported Christian writing for a considerable length of time. Actually, her religious feelings persuaded that “what is acceptable in itself praises God since it reflects God,” and in this manner, her craft needed to do all humanly conceivable to copy each part of His character. This conviction is at times shown in manners that would be hostile to most Christians today.
Her characters flounder in their corruption, believing themselves to be acceptable individuals until they are brought to the surprising truth of their own shock. Quite often, with the moment of mindfulness, they are offered the beauty of God, regardless of whether they wish to take it or not. In any case, some would discover her depictions of wrongdoing hostile and she under delicate ends can be loathsome in a manner that could make readers dismiss in disgust.
