Feminism and Flannery O'Connor: A study of the feminine grotesque.

摘要

This examination of Flannery O'Connor's work provides a comprehensive application of first- and second-wave feminist principles, creating an historical framework from which to examine O'Connor's use of the grotesque from a third wave feminist perspective. An analysis of the female characters found in O'Connor's short stories and novels reveals that her women are rendered silent and invisible, often subject to erasure or destruction by male force that they are powerless to prevent. Furthermore, this patriarchal control extends beyond the merely physical. O'Connor's female characters have unconsciously internalized male constructs that manipulate their conscious actions and render them grotesque in ways that do not affect the males in O'Connor's fiction. Whereas O'Connor's males are grotesque because they decline from a religious ideal, her females are grotesque because they decline from a social or cultural ideal. Patriarchal labels and the male construct of the "angel"---creations of the dominant male---provide those social and cultural ideals from which the female characters deviate. Because they fall short of the requirements as constructed by the dominant male in a patriarchal society, O'Connor's females have a degraded sense of self that is not, like her males, predicated upon theological concerns. While a sense of degradation is the motivation for the actions of all of O'Connor's characters, her female characters lack the sense of free will that is attributed to the males. O'Connor's women do not act of their own volition. As victims, they simply react to the males and to the male constructs that surround them, resulting in a grotesque nature that is specifically feminine.