Preview

An Analysis Of Women's Lost And Returned Souls By Flannery O Connor

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
9716 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
An Analysis Of Women's Lost And Returned Souls By Flannery O Connor
Women 's Lost and Returned Souls
—— An Analysis of Women 's Displacement and Epiphany in O 'Connor 's Works Yuan LinLin

April 20, 2013

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing certain female characters in Flannery O’Connor’s works from the perspective of feminism. By combining the displacement theory in psychology and the Christian existentialism, it illustrates specific changes and reconstructions realized by female characters before and after the occurrence of displacement as well as the impact on their spiritual world by violence and male intruders. The paper also discusses old Southern ideas and the constraints thrown by the patriarchal society, the estrangement of female characters’ struggling environment and the
…show more content…
Nevertheless, their minds have been reshaped by male enforcement leading to blindness and bigotry. In this sense, by pretending themselves as thoughtful and far-sighted “iron hand” in the neighborhood, women’s self-identity is nowhere to find. In particular, O 'Connor deliberately gives no names to the female characters in A Good Man Is Hard to Find except June Star the granddaughter, which expressed her implication towards the loss of certain female identity on its literal level leaving the real voice aside. Besides, the desire for the traditional lady outlook, women vex themselves with those meaningless appearance and outward affiliations. For instance, the Grandmother’s preparation before the trip in A Good Man Is Hard to Find detailed that …show more content…
The epiphany is mainly occurred through actions of displacement and violence. The sudden strike leads to the sudden consciousness. The core lying in the violent approaches can be explained by her religious experience and all the means she takes are indispensable for women to reach their final destination. In discussion of women’s changes, O’Connor can give a full play of her writing ambition and solve the problems that seem unsolvable.
4.1 Indifference of Southern Tradition
The peculiar religious conception O’Connor holds alienates her from most Southern writers who have a Southern complex and focus more on its historical significance. Although she also feeds on this land as her writing motivation, she’s more willing to alleviate the current problems by rejecting the Utopian ideology of moral progress and absorbing the source from the God. Women under her works, are liberated from the fatuous mind and restored with a new perception which goes against the Southern tradition. The scene Mrs. Turpin pictures in Revelation is an illustration of indifference towards the Southern

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, O’Connor seems to suggest that only through conflicts can the “good” in people be found. The way that the grandmother seems to dwell in the past suggests that she believes that it would’ve been easier to find a “good” man a long time ago. To the grandmother, trying to find goodness today would prove to be very challenging and possibly even useless. Through the use of symbolism, foreshadowing, and metaphors, O’Connor develops the story’s theme.…

    • 946 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    3. Mrs. Turpin is the main character of this short story and proves to be a dynamic character. In the beginning of the story Mrs. Turpin immediately starts judging everyone in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. While observing these people she was thinking to herself how grateful she was that she was a white woman with a nice home and land as opposed to being “white trash” or black. She even says that she believes that poverty stricken black people cannot get into Heaven because they don’t measure up to certain standards. She views poor and black people to be lesser than her until the very end of the…

    • 1228 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the short story “Revelation” Flannery O'Connor introduces us to Mrs. Turpin, a Christian woman who appears oblivious to the way she treats people. O’Connor highlights Mrs. Turpin’s hypocrisy by showing the incommensurable ways that Mrs. Turpin goes against the Bible when it comes to love and compassion. However, Mrs. Turpin isn’t the only character that exhibits ignorance in this short story. Mary Grace, the help, and even Clyde display ignorant behavior whenever it comes to responding the Mrs. Turpin. Although the story centers around the ignorance of Mrs. Turpin where one person displays ignorance, others will exhibit ignorant behavior also.…

    • 367 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Flannery O’Connor is known as one of the best short story authors. She successfully combines violence, religion, and grotesque into her short stories. She uses violence to take big actions and catch the attention of her audience. O’Connor was no doubt a dedicated Catholic, but in her stories she managed to apply multiple religions into her works (Nielson). O’Connor takes the word grotesque to a new level. She makes her characters bizarre by their physical and mental appearance. Flannery O’Connor uses characters that appear grotesque to make her stories capture the attention of her audience. From reading her stories you would think that she had a crazy messed up life, but she was actually just a normal well educated girl. O’Connor was born an only child in Savannah, Georgia. While there her early childhood education started at the city’s Catholic school. Later, she and her parents moved to Milledgeville, Georgia where they had existing family.…

    • 757 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    People always strive for perfection, yet constantly fall short. Flannery O’Connor presents life as that of unredeemable pain, and that humans are simply organisms who are violent contradictions. Flannery O’Connor’s stories often feature characters that are similar in many aspects, facing different situations. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” depict much of what O’Connor is famous for in the literary world. Through the use of theme, style, and symbolism, Flannery makes it clear the powerlessness and impotence of humans and the insignificance of their desires, dreams and pretentions.…

    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Both Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne share some common themes. In Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne addresses the suffering that emerges from sin, especially the sin of adultery that leads to isolation of sinners. The plot revolves around two female characters Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl. Through the two women, Hawthorne reflects the women’s hardships in the 17th century. On the other hand, Invisible Man is a novel that not only critiques racism but one that makes women invisible. Ellison fails to develop the female characters in an equal manner to the male character to reinforce the idea of gender inequality. This essay seeks to evaluate the representation of gender in American literature in Invisible Man and Scarlett Letter.…

    • 1848 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Un-utterable Longing: The Discourse of Feminine Sexuality in The Awakening." Studies in American Fiction 24.1 (1996):2-23. Full-Text. InfoTrac Web: InfoTrac Onfile. Online. Gale Group. Kimbel Library, Conway, Sc. 10 Mar. 2004.…

    • 2601 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Arthur Friend Symbolism

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages

    With Oates’ historic background, it is easy to understand the link between her common themes and symbols in her stories. In this particular short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, Oates’ distributes one of her most common themes, violence against women. By the use of this element, Oates’ was able to alert readers of the potential violence that could become…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Joyce Oats and Charlotte Gilman created short stories depicting how women living in a patriarchal society can cause mental breakdowns, and psychological problems. Oppression can lead to a mental breakdown where reality becomes distorted. In both short stories, even though the technique of the oppression differs, the final results are the same. Male figures oppress women to a point where a confusion between reality and fantasy is seen. Oppression through the lives and stories of Joyce Oats and Charlotte Perkins Gilman will be examined thoroughly, and the types of oppression will be discussed.…

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The fragmented structure which is common of postmodern novels is celebrated, setting the protagonist and reader free from there being only one truth, “our escape from the claustrophobic embrace of fixed systems of belief.” (Peter Barry in ‘Beginning Theory: An introduction of Literary and Cultural Theory’)Oranges defies and blurs the boundaries between genres and the stereotypical view of women and the church. Similarly to metanarrative ideas, Jeanette accepts the church to be the truth although she finds that it “purports to explain and reassure, [but] are really illusions fostered in order to smother difference, opposition and plurality” (Barbara Johnson in ‘Revisiting Indian epics from a post-modernist and feminist perspective’) Jeanette learns to enjoy the fact that she is different, even though her society tries to abolish it. She explores her identity, using fantasy and mini narratives to find her reality. What she comes up with isn’t the truth, it is always shifting and changing, but it is her truth.…

    • 316 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Author’s purpose in writingThe Handmaid’s Tale, is to illustrate to readers her bleak outlook on future if society does not change its path. The story follows the narrator, Offred as she goes about her life living under the oppressive regime of Gillead, a nation governed by religious fundamentalists. Through the narrators internal thoughts and daily life we see what is a possible outcome of feminism and patriarchy influenced by religious and governmental totalitarianism.…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Throughout The Handmaid's Tale, and Little Women, Margaret Atwood and Gillian Armstrong respectively present the struggle women face to establish identities within patriarchal societies. Both authors explore this cause by setting their texts in a society where men are empowered and women potentially disempowered. Where Atwood creates a destructive patriarchy through a futuristic dystopia that strips women of individuality, Armstrong contrastingly explores the idea that women can create an identity in spite of their social context. To heighten the reader's response toward the societies, both authors explore the particular experiences and emotions of a central female protagonist, thereby personalising a woman's struggle. Both authors also use the conclusion of their texts to reinforce their premise. Atwood creates despair over the lack of change in her society, while Armstrong presents the triumph of possibility as women in her text are able to overcome societal restrictions. Not only are the tones of the texts different, but because one is a film and the other a novel, the authors utilise techniques particular to their text type in order to influence the reader's response to the central arguments.…

    • 2013 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Feminism in Dubliners

    • 1336 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Joyce furthers his pro-feministic views by portraying women in a realistic way. His reflection of reality does not imply that he agrees with the reality, because the entire book is a critical exposition of society in Ireland, as well as the mental and political paralysis of its people. Joyce’s portrayal of reality is meant to be a sort of “bitter medicine” for the social and moral disease that paralyzes the female society. His way of representing females is truthful, and causes the problem of inequality to stand prominently in his reader’s minds. He portrays them in a way that reflects reality, not in the misguided and ignorant way that eighteenth century society viewed them. His readers are forced to realize the cruel actuality that women endure, which is how he gets his pro-feminist views across, and in a sense, forces an epiphany onto his readers.…

    • 1336 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ever wonder what it was like for a feminist in the 1914’s? It was tough. But what is even tougher is being a child in the family that has to take over her mother’s responsibilities when she dies and then face the violence of a father who does not appreciate the child being a girl. Women were constantly mistreated and not given any positions of power, not even in their own home, where they would be the only ones to be clean it, cooking in it, and taking care of the children. If a mother would pass away, the oldest girl child would be handed the responsibility of being the mother, whether she wanted to or not. Of course, there was the option of running away and escaping that fate; however, society would never allow such a girl to have any kind of good life. James Joyce proves this in his short story, “Eveline” portrays a theme of Women’s Suffragists through the character of Eveline who is a feminist in the year 1914 in Ireland; her life is a life of duty as a girl, violence from her father, society’s looks on her, and her choice of lifestyle in the end.…

    • 1166 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Jane Eyre

    • 1656 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In the 19th century, women were considered to be appendages to men. Marriage and family life were the whole world to women. Women depended upon men physically, financially and spiritually. This essay is to explore and appreciate the spirits of feminism reflected in this novel Jane Eyre, whose author took the lead in the campaign of feminism. There are three parts in the process of demonstration. The first part is about the oppression laid by the four main men characters on Jane. The second part is about three main women characters and their images in this novel. The last part is to point out some limitations of the author when illustrating feminism.…

    • 1656 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays