University Microfilms

INFORMATION TO USERS This dissertation was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again — beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and specific pages you wish reproduced. University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 A Xerox Education Company 73- 11,448 BAUMBACH, Georgia Anne, 1938- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FLANNERY O'CONNOR'S FICTIVE WORLD. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1972 Language and Literature, modern j University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan © 1973 GEORGIA ANNE BAUMBACH ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE PSYCHOLOGY OP FLANNERY O'CONNOR'S FICTIVE WORLD DISSERTATION Presented-in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for . the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Georgia Anne Baumbach, B.A. The Ohio State University 1972 Approved by. Adviser Department of English PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. Uni versityMicrofilms, A Xerox Education Company VITA February 23# 1938 . Born— Grand Rapids, Michigan 1955-57 .............. Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts 1959 ................ B. A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio i.961-63 .............. Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1964 t ... ... Teaching Assistant, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 1965-69 . Lecturer, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York 1971-72 . Lecturer, Queens College, Flushing, New York 1972-73 .............. Instructor, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York ii TABLE OF CONTENTS VITA ii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER II. WISE BLOOD 16 CHAPTER III. A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND 52 "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" {52)--"The River" (67)---"The Life You Save May Be Your Own" (73)— "A Stroke of Good Fortune (79) — "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" (88)— "The Artificial Nigger" (98)— "A Circle in the Fire" (108)— "A Late Encounter With the Enemy" (114)— "Good Country People" (118)— "The Displaced Person" (125)--Concluding Remarks: A Good Man Is Hard to Find (129) CHAPTER IV. THE VIOLENT BEAR IT A W A Y ................■............ 132 CHAPTER VI. EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE .......... 154 "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (154)— "Greenleaf" (162) — "A View of the Woods" (170)— "The Enduring Chill" (177)— "The Comforts of Home" (182)— "The Lame Shall Enter First" (185) — "Revelation" (191)— VParker's Back" (196)— "Judgement Day" (204)— Concluding Remarks: Everything That Rises Must Converge (209) CHAPTER V. GENERAL CONCLUSION 212 BIBLIOGRAPHY 216 i'ii CHAPTER X INTRODUCTION My purpose in taking for my subject the "psychology" of Flannery O'Connor’s fiction is not to dismiss what has been written of her as a religious writer/ but to try to prove a wider context in which to view her works. It is immediately striking in studying O ’Connor criticism that the preponderance is Catholic, or, more loosely, "religious," and that the remainder treats the writer as representing a defined "Southern" sensibility or as a practitioner of "the grotesque." Religious expli cations of her work, given the metaphysical thesis that informs them, have made reasonably clear a large part, one suspects, of O'Connor's intentional subject without touching on the non-didactic aspect of its mystery— its impulse as art. Institutionalized point of view, no matter how perceptive, tends to predictable and literal interpretation. X should like to open a new perspective on O'Connor's work. Although psychology is generally acknowledged to be a science, there is greater room in it for "mystery"— the same mystery with which O'Connor was obsessively concerned— than behaviorists, and clinicians themselves, often suppose to bfe the case. There is a reductive psycho logical jargon which is used to pretend the opposite— that all is known (or soon to be known) and experimentally accounted for. The best 1 psychologists, however, honor and seek to preserve from crude assault the mystery of the personality, and are in this sense closer in their view of things to religionists and artists than to others in their ranks. It is the examples of such as Erik Erikson, Robert Coles and D. S. Winnicott that I wish to follow in my criticism. When we come to works of literature or to human beings— the most profound fiction making mysterious sense of our lives— we need to approach them with as much flexibility and as little preconception as our language allows. Although for the sake of focus, I am going to set up a system of cate-* gories by way of approaching certain configurations in O'Connor's fic tion, I mean to use them suggestively, not absolutely, to open up her works for the reader rather than to substitute one schematic dogma for another. If the reader will bear with me through these initial stages, I trust he will be rewarded. In the early stages of this thesis I made use of Norman Holland' "dictionary of childhood fantasies" to locate particular phases of development that the O'Connor works proceed from.^ Although the use ! of such a system comes dangerously close to the sort of schematic pro cedure I want to avoid (and also relies on labels which I am not at all at ease with), it is possible, I believe, to use the dictionary purely as a heuristic device. Holland himself states emphatically' that the location of phases is just the starting point of analysis. I would ^The Dynamics of Literary Response (New York, 1968), pp. 32-50 like to summarize here what Holland's system told me about the fantasy structure of O'Connor's works, and then I will summarize where my subse quent analyses will lead. First, the oral phase. This phase is defined by the relation of the infant to the source of nourishment, the mother and, in partic ular, the mother's breast. Here boundaries of self are only beginning to emerge, and the infant feels indistinguishable from the mother. "In literature," says Holland, "this earliest phase appears as fantasies of losing the boundaries of self, of being engulfed, overwhelmed, drowned, or devoured, as in Poe's stories of being buried alive. But these fantasies can also be of a benevolent merger or fusion. ." In the second half of this phase, the aggressive or tooth-stage, the child attempts to "incorporate . both the wished-for and the feared con tents of the mother's body, [to] return to the original at-oneness." Images of this phase are those having to do with the mouth: "biting, sucking, smoking, inhaling, talking."3 in a larger sense, this phase has to do with all aspects of maternal care, and the quality of this care will determine whether the child will trust the "outside world," especially other people. In O'Connor's fiction oral images are especially prominent. There is not a single work that does not depict the activities of 2 Holland, 35. ^Holland, 37. “ -- eating and drinking. Mealtime scenes are especially frequent, and are usually tense, painful occasions. Food is a courtship gift in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find, ' "A Temple of the Holy Ghost," and "Parker's Back," linking the maternal relationship to subsequent love relationships and to sex. Although characters like Bevel in "The River," the boys in "A Circle in the Fire" and "The Lame Shall Enter First," declare themselves "hungry," they are quick to distinguish between inadequate and artificial nourishment and "the real thing." "Mother's milk"— that is, milk from [ her dairy cows— plays an important role in "A Circle in the Fire," "Greenleaf," and "The Enduring Chill»" Mrs. Crater in "The Life You Save" accuses Shiftlet of trying to "milk" her. In line witli this, the alternating wish-and-fear of being "engulfed, overwhelmed . or devoured" and of "losing the boundaries of self" is central to these works. They end most frequently with the coming of an all-enveloping "tide"— whether water, fire or darkness— which obliterates distinctions and gathers all together. A devouring monster appears in pome of .the stories— as the giant shovel in "A View i of the Woods," as the bull in "Greenleaf," as the dragon in the epigraph to A Good Man Is Hard to Find— who reflects the projected oral aggres sion, thus the fearful side of engulfment.

Load more