Flannery O’Connor was a Southern Gothic writer known for her short stories and novels, including Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. She was a deeply religious Roman Catholic and attended college in Georgia and the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her characters are often seen as grotesque, but she contested this label. She devoted herself to writing and raising birds on her family farm in Georgia, and was disabled by lupus.
Flannery O’Connor is a Georgian writer who lived from 1925 to 1964. She was known for her Southern Gothic novels, reminiscent of Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers. Although her career was brief, ending with her untimely death from lupus, she is remembered today for her powerful literary works, including her masterful short stories and her two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away.
Mary Flannery O’Connor, who bore her middle name, was the only child of a deeply religious Roman Catholic family. Her father died of lupus when she was a teenager. Flannery O’Connor attended college at what is now Georgia College & State University, and holds a master of fine art in creative writing from the famed Iowa Writers Workshop. Robert Fitzgerald, a famous poet and translator, was her friend and mentor; she stayed with him and his wife in their home for a period of time.
Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, was published in its entirety in 1952, although the first four chapters had been serialized in magazines in previous years. The novel is notable for its grim depiction of Christianity and the struggle for faith. The protagonist of the story, Hazel Motes, voluntarily destroys her sight, blinding herself with lime, and fills her shoes with stones and glass to suffer for her faith.
Hazel Motes and the other characters in the book, and in much of Flannery O’Connor’s other work, are seen as “grotesque”; that is, they are bizarre and horrific and unnerving. Flannery O’Connor has contested that characterization, however. He said that “anything from the South will be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it will be called realistic.”
Throughout her life, Flannery O’Connor devoted herself to her written work and to raising birds on the family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. She was never married and was disabled for much of her life due to her lupus. However, although Flannery O’Connor hasn’t had the chance to experience much of the outside world, her works reveal a rich and layered imagination.
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