Flannery O'Connor: Literary Grace

by Sophie West

Image from New Georgia Encyclopedia, courtesy of Ina Dillard Russell Library, Georgia College and State University, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/literature-overview/m-459/, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Flannery O’ Connor was well-known for her relationship with God, but her means of expression differ from how many women choose to express their faith. O’Connor was a famous American writer who grew up in the 1930’s, and one of the defining traits of her fiction is its focus on Christianity.

Flannery O’Connor was born on March 25th, 1925, and she died just before she turned forty on August 3rd, 1964. For someone who died so young, she left an astonishing amount of writing: two novels and thirty-one short stories. Her family was devoutly Catholic, adding context to why much of her writing focuses on Christian themes of grace, redemption, and spiritual struggle. Her two novels are prime examples of these themes. The first of the two, Wise Blood (1952), records a prophet’s quest for faith and salvation. The second, The Wise Bear it Away (1960), focuses on the relationship between a young boy and his uncle, who is also a prophet.1

While O’Connor’s narratives are known for their religious themes, they often feature grotesque or seemingly immoral characters to demonstrate the conflicts that O’Connor is attempting to work through in her literature.2 O’Connor has faced critiques on her work because of this, though the reality may be that readers may not always understand what O’Connor is trying to get at when they criticize her work so deeply.

One short story, for example, is called “Good Country People.” The story features a disabled woman who feels a sense of superiority to those around her until a Bible salesman tricks her and steals her prosthetic leg, leaving her stranded in a barn near her home. While an odd story to some, others recognize that O’Connor brilliantly utilizes the con artist and the prideful Hulga to explore themes of spiritual blindness and deception. Her literature marks a great achievement in philosophical and spiritual thought, asking many of the same questions that other Christians find themselves asking throughout their lives.3

Flannery O’Connor was an only child, and, due to the Great Depression and her father's lupus, they were forced to move from Savannah, Georgia, to Atlanta when O’Connor was young. After several months in the city, O’Connor and her mother moved back to Savannah, where her father visited them on weekends. When O’Connor was fifteen, her father eventually died of his illness. Lupus would eventually take O’Connor's life as well.

Despite her passion for fiction, O’Connor graduated college with a degree in sociology before receiving a master’s degree in creative writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Though her devotion to her faith seemed odd to her contemporaries, O’Connor remained a devout Catholic until the end of her life. Women like O’Connor strengthen and deepen other’s faith through their thoughtful engagement with some of religion’s most important questions.4

---

Footnotes

1. Nicholas Parker, “Where to Start With Flannery O'Connor,” New York Public Library, March 24, 2017, https://www.nypl.org/blog/2017/03/24/where-start-flannery-oconnor.

2. Amy Shearn, “Flannery O’Connor’s Moments of Grace,” JSTOR Daily, ITHAKA, March 25, 2017, https://daily.jstor.org/flannery-oconnors-moments-of-grace/.

3. Heather McRobie, "Is Flannery O'Connor a Catholic writer?," The Guardian, April 22, 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/apr/22/fiction.

4. "Flannery O'Connor," Georgia Women of Achievement, accessed December 22, 2025, https://www.georgiawomen.org/flannery-oconnor.