Flannery O Connor's Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic is a style of writing developed during the nineteenth century in the Southern parts of the United States which would be unlike any other known at the time. One of its most famous authors truly made an impact on society with her writing. As Ginger Rodriguez said in Flannery O’Connor’s biography, she “wrote works of fiction that, once read, cannot be forgotten”. Flannery O’Connor was indeed a master of Southern Gothic writing.

O’Conor was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25, 1925. “As the only child of devout Catholic parents in the South, religion played a major role in her upbringing and helped shape her into the type of writer she would become” (Rodriguez). She grew up in a time where women were expected to get married and stay home, however, O’Connor decided to take a different route and enrolled in College to pursue an education. She had discovered her passion for writing when she was in High School and this served as her inspiration to continue learning. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in literature in 1947. Flannery O’Conor is considered one of the most famous writers of the Southern Gothic genre.

But what exactly is Southern Gothic? It is “A style of writing practiced by many writers of the American South whose stories set in that

region are characterized by grotesque, macabre, or fantastic incidents.” (Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia Of Literature). Another feature very distinct to this genre are the characters in each story. They are southerners who have exaggerated personalities and there tends to be a big emphasis on their morality. “O’Connor introduces characters who are sure of their own superior morality, then confronts them with situations that show they are not, in fact, moral” (Rodriguez).
A villain can always be found as one of the main characters, and their evilness is often embellished. “O’Connor’s villains are typically men who act heartlessly and often violently, without any compunction, as with her Critical Insights character the Misfit, the murderer who appears in her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and explains that there is “no pleasure but meanness” (Marshall, 10)
The grotesque element is very important in this genre but not only in the situations that the main characters find themselves in. Often times, characters will be described as having some sort of flaw or deformity. “Characters with severe physical disfigurements appear throughout the oeuvre, particularly in the work of Flannery O’Connor, who, as Alan LloydSmith claims “created grotesque people and situations born of—but in excess of—their southern context” (Marshall 13). An interesting aspect of this is that although they may be flawed, the author, in this case Ms. O’Connor does not use that to create sympathy in the reader. Often times she writes the stories in a manner where the reader is not able to emotionally connect to the characters.

In terms of her writing, O’Connor was a complex author.

A lot of her stories did not make sense, not in terms of how they were written but in trying to understand the reasoning behind why things happened the way they did. For example, a lot of her main characters met gruesome deaths or horrible endings. As explained by Ginger Rodriguez “Flannery O’Connor’s devout Catholicism plays a major role in her writing. O’Connor’s deep faith comes as a surprise to many readers who fail to see any aspects of religion in her dark outcomes and often-horrific plot” but O’Connor would argue that she would only have been able to write the stories after reflecting on the catholic morals which were instilled in

her.

In short, Flannery O’Connor left a mark on American literature through her stories. She is a master of Southern Gothic writing and was able to tell truly unforgettable stories. She was an anomaly at the time because she was a woman author, in a genre that was not particularly characterized by feminine traits such as emotions or subtlety. Her writing had all the distinctive traits of Southern