Female Characters in Flannery O'Conner Short Stories - Essay Example

Female Characters in Flannery O’Conner Short Stories Introduction Flannery O’Conner was a Southern writer who is best known for her short stories. Her stories are rich in local color and they present a variety of themes and issues that she thought were important to the historical time frame in which she wrote. O’Connor has talked about racial prejudice, the injustices of the world and family secrets. Many critics see O’Connor as a religious writer because she was a devout Catholic, but there are many other themes that are presented in her works. For this essay the female characters are interesting because each one was a similar way of expressing herself. Some have an aspect of madness, some are very assertive and others are very devout Christians. The three short stories that will be critiqued for the elements of women are , “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” and “A Circle In the Fire.” All three stories provide the reader with a look into the traditional, Southern woman and her need for survival. 2 “Everything that Rises Must Converge” In the beginning of this story, the reader is introduced to Julian and his mother. They are on their way to a “reducing class at the Y” (O’Connor 1) where his mother must lose 20 pounds. The reader is immediately pulled into the story because the writing is very clear and crisp. O’Connor has the reader standing behind the mother and watching her try on her hat to get it to fit her head in just the right way. The author writes, “she lifted the hat one more time and set it down slowly on top of her head” (“Everything” 1). This automatically sets the mood for what is going to happen and the reader understands that the mother is elderly by the “grey hair protrude on either side of her florid face …” (“Everything” 1). In this story like in all the others she wrote, the woman is a mother and takes care of the home. However, in this instance, Julian’s mother is still attempting to live in the past while the world has changed outside her house. The story is enhanced when looking at the relationship between Julian and his mother. She is still attempting to see him as a young boy and he is attempting to assert his independence. This mother and son conflict continues throughout the story. His mother was “still [living] according to the laws of her own fantasy world” (“Everything” 6) where she would always remain. He saw the world differently and was attempting to make her see the world for what it was—a place that had changed. His mother still thought she was living in a time when slaves were slaves and everything in her mind was right. This is not the world they were living in now. Bryan N. Wyatt states that Julian wrestles with what to do with his mother since he has become emotionally detached from her. He thinks about abandoning her at a bus stop to get out of her clutches. Michael W. Crocker and Robert C. Evans note that the convergence in the story has to do with Julian’s mother being seen as n outsider of the society in which she lives and having to come to terms with the fact that life is not what it used to be – that blacks are now free and they can move around as whites and they can work in jobs instead of on plantations (par. 7). This is a sad stroke of luck for Julian’s mother because it is difficult for her to deal with this truth. In fact, this is so difficult that she walks down the street, has a heart attack and dies at the end of the story when she is confronted with reality. To say that this is a poignant ending is an understatement. The reader can identify with Julian’s mother and with Julian because these two people are seen in everyone’s family. The mother in this short story is very traditional, and she may be suffering from delusions as she lives in her fantasy world. She only understands good Southern hospitality that she grew up with and she is not prepared for the life outside of this fantasy. For O’Connor, this was an story about the lack of grace that society seemed to show when they were dealing with certain conflicts. She in fact changed the definition of convergence according to John F. Desmond. Desmond states that convergence usually means “the universal drive toward spiritual union among men, through love” (1). In O’Connor’s story, convergence is resisted throughout the story and through choosing isolation by the characters. As an example, Julian’s mother rejected the convergence through staying at home and not interacting with the world around her. According to Desmond, the ending of the story provides what could be called an “apocalyptic-like violence” (1) that changes the way that Julian’s other reacts to the world around her. These types of situations are common when a character must change by facing a strong reality. The idea of the traditional mother is also seen throughout all of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. 3 “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” In this short story, the mother is again an older woman and this time she has a daughter. The daughter is important to the story because the mother is going to give her daughter away to a man who is essentially a tramp (“A Good” 51). During the time of the depression, tramps were a common feature. They were people who went from city to city, usually by the train, stopping to help people fix things in their homes in exchange for food and shelter. In this case, the man, Mr. Shiftlet, comes to a house where he finds the woman and her daughter, Lucynell Crater. The daughter is retarded and she does not speak; instead, she makes sounds. She does not talk until Mr. Shiftlet teachers her a word. Both mother and daughter have the same name. The story unfolds as Mr. Shiftlet comes to help the family on many levels. Mrs. Crater realizes that he may be the one to marry her daughter because he is so kind and she is “ravenous for a son-in-law” (“A Good” 57). Mrs. Crater shows that she is a strong woman who has had to take care of herself and her daughter after her husband died. Again, Mrs. Crater, like Julian’s mother, has learned how to survive in the world around her. Mrs. Crater also has an unrealistic goal, that of making sure that her daughter is eventually married. Mrs. Crater knows that there is evil in the world, and Mr. Shiftlet states, “The world is almost rotten” (“A Good” 53). This is a foreshadowing of what is to become of the daughter in the story. The idea of conflict between men and women is again shown in this story when Mrs. Crater approaches Mr. Shiftlet to marry her daughter. She constantly tells Mr. Shiftlet that he can have her daughter. In desperation, she finally states, “You want you an innocent woman, don’t you? “You don’t want none of this trash” (“A Good” 60). Which is something that a mother would possibly not say today. But the conflict is there because he does not really want to take a wife. Suzanne Morrow Paulson states that Mr. Shirtlet symbolizes evil and she is also nurturing because she wants her daughter to have a husband that will take care of her. Sadly, Lucynell has a similar fate as Julian’s mother because she is left at a diner while she is sleeping with little remorse from Mr. Shirtlet. The theme of , “the live you save may be your own” becomes a metaphor for the fact that Mr. Shirlet now saves himself by leaving the girl and moving on. Another aspect to this story is given by Melita Schaum who paints Mr. Shirlet as a devil character. She states that he appears out of no where and he proceeds to trick Mrs. Crater into taking her daughter, her car, some money and “her immortal soul” (par. 15). Once he is finished conning her, he moves on to another place to do the same. Tom Deignan states that there is an emptiness in both Mrs. Crater and Mr. Shirtlet in which they both will trade their humanity for material gain. In Mrs. Crater’s case it was to trade her daughter for Mr. Shirtlet’s carpentry skills and for Mr. Crater it is the car that he wants. Both people receive what they want but in a way, Lucynell is sacrificed by both of them for material gain. Both stories show a mother that has some delusions and who live in a fantasy world. Both women (Julian’s mother and Mrs. Crater) are involved with their lives in a particular way that they are seeing something that is not true. Mrs. Crater is seeing the possibility of her daughter having a normal life if she can find the right man. In the last story, two women share the theme but there are three boys who create more problems for these women. 4 “The Circle of Fire” In this story, the reader meets two women, Mrs. Prichard and Mrs. Cope. Both women are friends and they live within the same area. The reader also meets three mischievous boys who are up to no good. Mrs. Prichard is the woman who is most assertive and seems to be more important to the story because she is able to see what is going on with the boys. Mrs. Cope seems to be the one who is living in a fantasy world about how wonder the world is and how people are always worth praying for no matter what they do. In some respects, Mrs. Cope seems to be like Julian’s mother in that she lives in somewhat of a fantasy world about life in general. Candyce Norvell states that Mrs. Cope does not have courage and she does not have wisdom so the boys are able to do whatever they want, no matter what she tells them. Mrs. Cope does have a farm that is very prosperous but she has forgotten that the people around her are people and not slaves. Like Julian’s mother, Mrs. Cope still believes that she holds a high position because of her wealth. The challenge is that the only person who really believes this is Mrs. Cope. Dorothy Walters states that Mrs. Cope is “is so involved with her own material concerns that she is oblivious to the human needs of those about her” (par. 17). This creates more problems for her because she does not see that the boys that come to the farm are not to be trusted. In contrast, Mrs. Prichard is a woman who is obsessed by death. She finds ways to go to people’s funerals just to view the bodies. She is one of the workers on the farm ad she is less optimistic than Mrs. Cope. This is a secondary character, but Mrs. Prichard sees the boys as a way to see something different than their regular routine. She is also able to see that there may be something more to the boys than what they are showing. Unfortunately, Mrs. Cope stays oblivious to even these children. Connie Ann Kirk suggests that The boys have really come back to the farm because of the memories of one of the children. They at first are not going to do mischief in this researcher’s opinion, but are there to try an relive memories. The fact that Mrs. Cope ignores them and does not realize that Powell, the older boy, is having emotional problems because of his losses, may be what brings out the need for the boys to set a fire. Because of her insensitivity, Powell realizes that the farm is no longer his, but it belongs to someone else. Again, similar to Julian’s mother, Powell expected that the farm would be the same as it was when his family left it. Powell’s reaction is to burn everything so that he can move on with his life. Of course, this is not the logical way that a person would do this, but he is a boy and this is the only thing he can think of to do. Perhaps it would have been better for Mrs. Cope to pay more attention to him and his needs. The story is about grief and Powell is at the center of the grief. The women in this story are secondary because they are not available to the boys. Mrs. Cope ignores the fact that this young man is coping in the only way that he knows how. 5 Conclusion The stories of Flannery O’Connor are full of local color and of themes that she found important to the South that she lived within. Each story is a small, snapshot of what she may have understood. She stated that she did not use her religion in her stories, but many critics pointed out religious themes. In many stories, she had the theme of good versus evil and she portrayed some of her villains as people that in the end needed forgiveness. O’Connor understood humanity in a way that many authors of her day did not. She was able to create stories that bring the reader into the story quickly and holds them there until the story ends. Works Cited Crocker, Michael W. and Evans, Robert C. “ Faulkner's 'Barn Burning' and O'Connor's 'Everything That Rises Must Converge'”. CLA Journal, Vol. XXXVI, 4, June, 1993, pp. 371-83. Gale Literary Database. Blinn Library. 6 March 2012. Deignan, Tom. "An overview of 'The Life You Save May Be Your Own." Gale Online Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Mar. 2012. Desmond, John. F. “The Lessons of History: Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Everything that Rises Must Converge’. The Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 1, Autumn, 1972. Gale Literary Database. Blinn Library. 6 March 2012. Kirk, Connie Ann. "'A Circle in the Fire'." Critical Companion to Flannery O'Connor: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCFOC0012&SingleRecord=True Blinn Library 8 March 2012. Norvell, Candyce. "Critical Essay on 'A Circle in the Fire'." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 19. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Mar. 2012. O’Connor, Flannery. “Everything that Rises Must Converge”. [WEB]. 6 March 2012. ---. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Orlando, FLA: Harcourt Books. 1976. Print Paulson, Suzanne Morrow. "Male/Female Conflicts." Flannery O'Connor: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1988. 28-45. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. 82. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Mar. 2012. Gale Literature Resource Center. Blinn Library. 6 March 2012. The Purdue OWL. Purdue U Writing Lab, 2010. Web. 7 March 2012. Schaum, Melita. "'Erasing Angel': The Lucifer-Trickster Figure in Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction." Southern Literary Journal 33.1 (Fall 2000): 1-26. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 61. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. Literature Resource Center. Blinn Library 8 Mar. 2012. Walters, Dorothy. "Chapter 3: Excursions into Catastrophe." Flannery O'Connor. Dorothy Walters. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1973. Twayne's United States Authors Series 216. The Twayne Authors Series. Web. Blinn Library 8 Mar. 2012. Wyatt, Bryan N. “The Domestic Dynamics of Flannery O'Connor: Everything That Rises Must Converge” Twentieth Century Literature 38:1, Spring, 1992. 66-88. Gale Literary databases. Blinn Library. 6 March 2012. Read More