The Use of the Grotesque in the Short Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson Mccullers, Flannery O'connor

DISTORTED TRADITIONS: THE USE OF TH E GROTESQUE IN THE SHORT FICTION OF EUDORA WELTY, CARSON MCCUL LERS, FLANNERY O’CONNOR AND BOBBIE ANN MASON Carol A. Marion, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2004 APPROVED: James Baird, Major Professor James T. F. Tanner, Minor Professor and Chair of the Department of English Timothy Parrish, Committee Member Sandra L. Terrell, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Marion, Carol A., Distorted traditions: The use of the grotesque in the short fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, and Bobbie Ann Mason. Doctor of Philosophy (English), August 2004, 169 pp., references, 151 titles. This dissertation argues that the four writers named above use the grotesque to illustrate the increasingly peculiar consequences of the assault of modernity on traditional Southern culture. The basic conflict between the views of Bakhtin and Kayser provides the foundation for defining the grotesque herein, and Geoffrey Harpham’s concept of “margins” helps to define interior and exterior areas for the discussion. Chapter 1 lays a foundation for why the South is different from other regions of America, emphasizing the influences of Anglo-Saxon culture and traditions brought to these shores by the English gentlemen who settled the earliest tidewater colonies as well as the later influx of Scots-Irish immigrants (the Celtic-Southern thesis) who settled the Piedmont and mountain regions. This chapter also notes that part of the South’s peculiarity derives from the cultural conflicts inherent between these two groups. Chapters 2 through 5 analyze selected short fiction from each of these respective authors and offer readings that explain how the grotesque relates to the drastic social changes taking place over the half-century represented by these authors. Chapter 6 offers an evaluation of how and why such traditions might be preserved. The overall argument suggests that traditional Southern culture grows out of four foundations, i. e., devotion to one’s community, devotion to one’s family, devotion to God, and love of place. As increasing modernization and homogenization impact the South, these cultural foundations have been systematically replaced by unsatisfactory or confusing substitutes, thereby generating something arguably grotesque. Through this exchange, the grotesque has moved from the observably physical, as shown in the earlier works discussed, to something internalized that is ultimately depicted through a kind of intellectual if not physical stasis, as shown through the later works. Copyright 2004 by Carol A. Marion ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter 1. DISTORTED TRADITIONS…………………………………………………………1 2. EUDORA WELTY: THE SOUTHERN COMMUNITY…………………………...47 3. CARSON MCCULLERS: THE SOUTHERN HEART…………………………….74 4. FLANNERY O’CONNOR: SOUTHERN FAITH………………………………...100 5. BOBBIE ANN MASON: THE CONTEMPORARY SOUTHERNER…………...125 6. A SUMMARY RETROSPECT……………………………………………………145 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………………….156 WORKS CONSULTED ……………………………………………………………………….163 iii CHAPTER 1 DISTORTED TRADITIONS Introduction The term “grotesque,” which has become almost synonymous with Southern literature, generates a great deal of literary disagreement. Originally used to describe something decidedly non-human, applied to the gargoyles perched atop medieval cathedrals, “grotesque” has come to represent a diverse range of conditions. Philip Thomson notes in his historical survey The Grotesque that the term retained its identity as a tangible, visual reference as it moved out of the grottoes of ancient Rome into the cathedrals of medieval Europe and eventually onto the canvasses of painters. However, much of the definitional trouble began as it moved onto the pages of writers. Once the use of “grotesque” moved out of the strictly tangible realm into the intangible realm, disagreements over its significance began in earnest. What continues to lie at the heart of the debate is an inability to determine what ought to be considered grotesque. Consequently, literary critics such as Thomas Mann, William Van O’Connor, and Leslie Fiedler cannot agree on the “proper” use of the term, leading some critics to complain that the term “has been applied so frequently and so recklessly by so many contemporary critics to so many different literary occurrences that it now becomes increasingly difficult to use the term with any high degree of clarity and precision” (Spiegel 426), while others begin to see the grotesque as the true hallmark of the Modernist genre (Millichap 339). However, the lively debate over what is or is not grotesque suggests that the concept is only undergoing its own metamorphosis into something more in keeping with contemporary views. As Geoffrey Harpham notes, the grotesque is omnipresent and can support nearly any theory; therefore, there appears to be no way to progress to a comprehensive theory (“Preface” xviii). 1 The core of the debate comes from Wolfgang Kayser and Mikhail Bakhtin. Kayser, in The Grotesque in Art and Literature, sees the grotesque as that which espouses the horrifying demonic aspect of human life, a negative circumstance to be feared and eschewed at all costs. Bakhtin, on the other hand, in Rabelais and His World, sees the grotesque as satanic, but goes on to assert that all laughter is demonic, born out of the fall of humanity; therefore, his view takes on the aspect of Carnival, an idea derived from the festive, democratic, popular culture of the Middle Ages, in which all aspects of the sublunary realm were seen as temporary and all humans were flawed and doomed. Such an idea was heavily influenced by the various plagues that swept Europe, but particularly the fourteenth century bout with the Black Death, which spawned an abundance of grotesque art characterized by a celebratory atmosphere as Death and his minions led a string of corpses in a kind of bizarre conga line. Nevertheless, if these two key opponents in the debate contradict one another on basic premises, how can lesser voices be expected to agree? Moreover, with two such divergent premises, how can the use of the grotesque be understood? And, more important to this dissertation, what does the close association of the grotesque with Southern literature signify? The answer to this question may be derived in part from Geoffrey Harpham, who offers several observations that are useful and one view in particular that may serve this dissertation. Harpham posits an interpretation of the grotesque that seems to fit the more contemporary perspective, claiming that its depiction can assume a variety of forms; it is, therefore, a “species of confusion” (Intro. xv). Furthermore, the grotesque form need not be strictly tangible in artistic expression; it can also “be experienced as a psychological event” (Harpham, Intro. xv). These two ideas begin to clarify the confusion that has resulted from contemporary modification of the traditionally tangible grotesque. Harpham elaborates: 2 . it is up to the culture to provide the conventions and assumptions that determine its particular forms. Culture does this by establishing conditions of order and coherence, especially by specifying which categories are logically or generically incompatible with which others. (Intro. xx) Such a requirement points directly to the Southern understanding of the grotesque: As formal systems of order come under increasing attack, cultural coherence slips when incompatible elements are juxtaposed, and the result is frequently grotesque. Furthermore, for Southern culture in particular, such an unraveling of formal order represents a threat to identity and existence itself; as Thomas Mann notes in Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (originally printed as Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 1918, and translated and published by F. Ungar in 1983), the grotesque is “ ‘properly something more than the truth, something real in the extreme, not something arbitrary, false, absurd, and contrary to reality’ ” (qtd. in Harpham, Intro. xix). In the Southern consciousness, these are true words, indeed, as the traditional communal, familial, and spiritual truths of Southern life are systematically replaced by incompatible realities. To anchor this interpretation, Harpham claims that grotesqueries “stand at a margin of consciousness between the known and the unknown, the perceived and the unperceived” (3). Such a margin applies nicely to Southern culture, which is consistently interested in the liminal, thereby producing the phenomenon of “outside” and “inside,” a trait that informs Southern culture, and thereby Southern literature. For example, a Southerner would reasonably consider someone from his own community as a fellow, but someone from a different county would be considered a stranger, and someone from a different state would be a foreigner. Therefore, the stranger might be perceived as grotesque because he is unknown. For example, in Faulkner’s novel Absalom! Absalom!, Thomas Sutpen is grotesque in part because he pointedly avoids ties 3 with the community. He has no past, which makes him suspect, and he lives outside town, which keeps him unfamiliar. Sutpen is not grotesque simply because he lives outside town; he is grotesque because he stands at Harpham’s “margin.” The townspeople have only rumor and gossip to satisfy their curiosity about Sutpen; therefore, he is simultaneously known and unknown. In addition to this physical quality of the liminal, behaviors that transgress

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