The South, The Grotesque, And The Visions Of Flannery O'Connor

One of the most significant writers in America, Flannery O'Connor, was born on March 25 in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925. She spent her early childhood as a devout Catholic there in a home just off Lafayette Square. The square features moss-draped live oaks, colorful azaleas, and an abundance of birds, all sitting in the shadows of the towering spires of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Things haven't changed much in this beautiful space. It still has its interesting spectrum of regular visitors: fast-walking pedestrians, lovers holding hand, lunch hour diners, retirees enjoying the benches, touring families, people waiting for the bus, runners and bikers, and children at play. And every day for the last 120 years, the cathedral casts its shadow over the O'Connor home while its bells remind the people of God's grace and their obligations as His children. I think as long as you can visit Lafayette Square, say on any pleasant Sunday afternoon, you can know O'Connor well.

Her family moved to Atlanta in 1938, where her father was diagnosed with lupus, a chronic disease involving the destruction of healthy tissue by the body's immune system. Shortly thereafter they moved 100 miles southeast to her mother's family home in Milledgeville. When her father died in 1941, O'Connor moved a few miles north of town to her uncle's farm where she lived with her mother. Eventually, the farm would be called Andalusia, and it became a refuge following her own diagnosis with lupus in 1950. At Andalusia, she would raise her beloved peacocks and weave her experiences and memories of people, ethics, morals, and religion into her novels, Wise Blood, and The Violent Bear It Away, and scores of short stories published in two collections in her lifetime, A Good Man is Hard to Find, and Everything That Rises Must Converge. Her Complete Stories appeared posthumously in 1971.

Main house at Andalusia

O'Connor's office-bedroom at Andalusia

Lupus, an incurable long-term autoimmune disease, took Flannery O'Connor from us in 1964 when she was in her 39th year. You can visit both her childhood home and Andalusia thanks to foundations that preserve the landscapes and memories she cherished. And, thanks to her, you can visit the South anytime by simply opening one of her books.

Many years ago the management at Andalusia removed scores of the offspring of O'Connor's beloved peacocks to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, a large Trappist estate about two and a half miles from our ridge top home. At that time the area was still quite rural and the peacocks flourished in and around the monastery grounds.

Thirty years ago on quiet evening when the wind was right it was not unusual for us to hear them calling faintly in the distance. Eventually, they were removed and for some years now there has been no call to break the silence. But we do remember those urgent and sometimes fearful calls in the dusk. Today the woods remain a gallery of sounds. Some we know well. Others we may not recognize so easily. Those of us who know O'Connor's work well may find it difficult to distinguish between the peacock, the author's veil, or the rich spirit world that inhabits her American South. After all, from the ancient traditions of the Catholic world the peacock is the symbol of immortality.

I think it is safe to say that while the South is significantly less Christ-centered than it was in O'Connor's time, it most certainly remains Christ-haunted. The Southerner who isn’t convinced of it is very much afraid if not haunted by the fact that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. And visitations by ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. In O'Connor's dance with the grotesque her characters and their angst cast strange shadows. The characters may fade away. Their shadows never fade away.


Sources

Photos and Illustrations:

Childhood photo, Andalusia Farm, Inc. Photo courtesy of the Flannery O'Connor Collection, Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, Georgia.
House, deepsouthmagazine.com
Bedroom, photo courtesy of Emily Elizabeth Beck
Adult portrait, openculture.com


Text:

Flannery O'Connor entry, Sarah Gordon, et al, georgiaencyclopedia.org
quotation from Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, New York; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969