Flannery O'Connor: Life, Work, and Literary Legacy

Introduction

Writing is an ancient art, used throughout history to convey entertainment, education, historical record, critique, rebuke, revelation, and many other purposes. There are various forms of writing through which authors express their feelings and intentions. History has produced many prolific writers who made names for themselves by writing instinctively about various themes and issues. Among those who have revolutionized the art of writing is Flannery O'Connor, a dynamic woman who drew on distinctive features and social realities in her work (Gordon 31). Many admirers of her writing indicate that she wrote from her heart, communicating clearly to her audience. Her visible achievements stand as evidence of the success she attained through the art of writing.

Her Life

March 25, 1925 marked the beginning of the life of Mary Flannery O'Connor. She was born in Savannah, Georgia, to Regina Cline and Edwin Francis O'Connor. The family was staunchly Catholic, and they lived in the South during her early childhood. It was during her school years that she discovered her interest in writing while attending Peabody High School. She later enrolled at the Georgia State College for Women and subsequently pursued further education at the University of Iowa (Gordon 16). During her college years she began working as an editor for the college magazine. At the university she also attended many writing workshops, fueling her passion for writing.

It was while pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Literature that she published her first short story, "The Geranium," in 1946, graduating the following year. Notably, O'Connor had a turbulent childhood marked by many challenges. Her father died when she was fifteen from disseminated lupus — a condition that would later afflict her as well. Fortunately, physicians eventually established a treatment for the disease, and she recovered. Additionally, growing up on the outskirts of town limited her exposure to the wider world compared with her peers (Gordon 20). Nonetheless, she managed to establish herself as an iconic writer.

Her Work

At the age of five, Flannery O'Connor reportedly taught her pet chicken to walk backwards. Several companies took interest in documenting this humorous story, and O'Connor herself later cited it as a defining moment in a holiday magazine essay (Gooch 21). Through her college life she worked as the magazine editor at her institution, and it was in that role that she refined her craft by contributing various essays. The turning point of her career, however, came with the release of her first novel, Wise Blood, in 1952. That book propelled her writing career, and she followed it with The Violent Bear It Away in 1960 and A Good Man Is Hard to Find in 1955, along with numerous essays. This body of work placed her firmly among the most proficient and instinctive writers of her era (Bloom 18).

Her rural setting — the chicken, the backyard, the village — helped her meditate on the discomfort she felt when exposed to fame and celebrity. In one interview, a magazine quoted her saying that the attention from her celebrity status made her feel like a cross between "Roy Rogers's horse and Miss Watermelon of 1955." This anecdote illustrates the degree to which her work propelled her into fame even as she remained ambivalent about it.

Her master's thesis was itself a collection of short stories entitled The Geranium, which traces a connection to an apprentice searching for her literary territory. After receiving her degree in 1947, she won the Rinehart-Iowa Award for a portion of Wise Blood. Following that award, Yaddo, an artists' retreat, hosted her while she continued work on the novel. She suffered a major setback in 1950 when lupus struck again, though she survived after treatment with steroid drugs (Gordon 39). She then moved permanently to Milledgeville, Georgia, where she spent the remainder of her life quietly at Andalusia farm. Despite the side effects of her medication, she continued to devote herself to writing and took trips to lecture and read from her work.

She also maintained an extensive correspondence that kept her connected to the literary world through figures such as the Fitzgeralds, Robert Lowell, and Caroline Gordon (Walker 11). She raised peacocks, received and advised visitors on literary and spiritual matters, reviewed the work of young writers, and wrote for the Georgia Bulletin, a publication of the Atlanta diocese. In early 1964 she underwent surgery for a fibroid tumor, which reactivated the lupus; she died shortly afterward. Nevertheless, in 1972, a posthumous complete collection of her stories won the National Book Award — an honor typically given to living writers — but the judges made an exception to recognize her lifetime achievements (Gooch 113). The Habit of Being, a collection of O'Connor's letters edited by Sally Fitzgerald, was published in 1979 and revealed both her writing habits and her profound religious convictions. Other major works include Everything That Rises Must Converge, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and The Violent Bear It Away.

Conclusion

Flannery O'Connor lives in the books of history as a talented writer who wrote successful stories from conventional subjects. She established a thematic consistency that few literary writers have been able to sustain, remaining true to her convictions regarding faith throughout her career. Her achievements — recognized by the National Book Award and celebrated by scholars and readers alike — confirm the honor she rightfully commands in the literary world.

Bloom, Harold. Flannery O'Connor. New York, NY: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009. Print.

Gooch, Brad. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor. New York, NY: Little, Brown, 2009. Print.

Gordon, Mary. "Flannery's Kiss." Michigan Quarterly Review 43.3 (2004): 328–49. ProQuest. Web. 11 Oct. 2013.

"Flannery O'Connor." Language and Literature 29 (2004): 1–2. ProQuest. Web. 11 Oct. 2013.

Walker, Sue. "Flannery O'Connor: Hermit Novelist." Modern Fiction Studies 47.4 (2001): 1035–6. ProQuest. Web. 11 Oct. 2013.