Eastern Illinois University The Keep Masters Theses Student Theses & Publications 1986 An Application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Theory of the Grotesque to the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor Holly Roberts Eastern Illinois University This research is a product of the graduate program in English at Eastern Illinois University. Find out more about the program. Recommended Citation Roberts, Holly, "An Application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Theory of the Grotesque to the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor" (1986). Masters Theses. 2683. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/2683 This is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Theses & Publications at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THESIS REPRODUCTION CERTIFICATE TO: Graduate Degree Candidates who have written formal theses. SUBJECT: Permission to reproduce theses. 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I I Date I respectfully request Booth Library of Eastern Illinois University not allow my thesis be reproduced because �- -�� Date Author m An Application of Mikhail Bakhtin' s Theory of the Grotesque to the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor (TITLE) BY Holly Roberts THESIS SUBMITIED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Arts IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL, EASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS 1986 YEAR I HEREBY RECOMMEND THIS THESIS BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE GRADUATE DEGREE CITED ABOVE DATE ABSTRACT The grotesque in Flannery O'Connor' s fiction has always been a central concern of her readers and critics, because it is such a prominent aspect of her work and is usually connected with the equally pervasive characteristics of violence, destruction, and death. Many of her critics see the grotesquerie of her characters and landscapes as indicative of humanity 's fallen existence--that it serves only to reveal what is wrong with the human condition. Such views echo the premises of Wolfgang Kayser's theory of the grotesque presented in his well-known book, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, but as I point out, this theory cannot provide an adequate context in which to fully understand O'Connor' s use of the grotesque as she described it in her public lectures and private correspondence. Although 0' Connor acknowledged that the gro- . tesque in her fiction functions to awaken her audience to the "distor­ tions" she saw in human existence, she also wrote that it affirms the potential for good in humanity. Therefore, I propose that Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the grotesque, presented in his work, Rabelais and His World, offers a more appropriate context in which to examine O'Connor's gro­ tesques than does Kayser's, because its premises assert the dignity, not the damnation, of humanity. This thesis, then , examines O'Connor's stated.intentions concerning her use of the grotesque and shows how they reflect more the premises of Bakhtin's theory than those of Kayser's. I reinforce this point by employing these premises to illuminate the grotesquerie in O'Connor's two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear .!..! Away , as we ll as in many of her short stories, such as "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "The Artifi­ cial Nigger," and "Good Country People.'' In concluding this thesis, I observe that Bakhtin's theory allows us to liberate our readings of ABSTRACT--continued O'Connor's fiction from a kind of moral and spiritual closure, because it helps us to see how her view of humanity and its relationship with God rejects the limitations of bourgeois Christianity. Roberts 1 In her essays, public lectures, and personal correspondence, Flannery O'Connor claimed that her Southern roots were largely responsi­ ble for her fictional preoccupation with the grotesque. In "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," an essay published in the Mystery and Manners collection, she maintained that in the South the freak is seen as a symbol of humanity's fall from God's grace, and of its indivi­ dual members' inferiority to "the whole man" (44). Although O'Connor appropriately called this Southern conception of humanity "theological," she also implied that the natives of her homeland are reluctant, if unwilling believers: •••I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn' t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows , particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essen­ tial displacement that he attains some depth in literature. (44-45) This literary symbol had a revelatory, even a corrective function for O'Connor, for she wrote that the hero-freak "is not simply showing us what we are, but what we have been and what we could become" (117-118). Thus, her statements concerning the use of the grotesque in her fiction revealed the intent to shock her audience into seeing those aspects of "modern life" which, in her Christian vision, were "repugnant" dis­ tortions but which she believed her audience saw as "natural" (33) . As a whole, these stated intentions convey a view of humanity as gro­ tesque as her own characters; yet it cannot necessarily be said that Roberts 2 she employed the art of distortion and exaggeration solely to emphasize humanity 's flawed condition. She also wrote: Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as no t, our own grin­ ning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept the fact that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. (226) O'Connor 's faith, heavily influenced by the teachings of St. Augustine, allowed her to perceive the grotesquerie she saw around her as an indi­ cation of both "evil" and "the good •••under construction." She saw the concrete world as good "because it proceeds from a divine source ," and the artist as one who "penetrates the concrete world in order to find at its depths the image of its source, the image of ultimate real­ ity" (157). As her published comments are studied, it becomes clear that O'Connor intended that her grotesque characters , landscapes , and objects both degrade and affirm the human condition, for she believed that "the writer of grotesque fiction" searches for "one image that will connect or combine or embody two points •••a point in the concrete, and • a point not visible to the naked eye , but believed in by him firmly, just as real to him, really as the one that everybody sees" (42). The "concrete" realm of her fiction she called "manners," referring to human social behaviors and attitudes, or "typical social patterns" (40). She called the invisible realm "mystery ," because she believed that that realm is the "objective world outside the mind" and therefore not subject to humanity's social and cultural structures and the behaviors determined by those structures (158). Although O'Connor did not define Roberts 3 the nature of this realm as either divine or demonic, she did write that "to insure our sense of mystery, we need a sense of evil which II sees the devil as a real spirit who must be made to name himself •• (MM , 117). She emphasized, however, that in her fiction, "frequently • the devil has been the unwilling instrument of grace" (MM , 118). The grotesque image, then, was the means by which she could con­ nect the two realms of mystery and manners in her fiction, because it allowed her to expose the distortions she saw in "typical" human social behavior while simultaneously showing how that behavior effects its own vulnerability to the chaotic and often destructive intervention of "mystery." She admitted that "the look of this fiction is going to be wild, that it is almost of necessity going to be violent and comic, because of the discrepancies it seeks to combine ," but in a letter pub­ lished in The Habit!:!:. Being, she expressed concern that even though "all" of her stories "are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it •••most people think of these sto­ ries as hard, hopeless, brutal, etc." (43 , 275). Many of her critics have thus interpreted her grotesques as models of moral or spiritual degeneracy while ignoring or underemphasizing the other aim she gave for her use of the grotesque--to show the "good • under construction." Janice Witherspoon Neulieb concludes that O'Connor reveals "only the dark side of this fallen world •••si nce she excludes from her fictive world the ideal image from which those grotesques have deviated'' (34-35). Mary McBride is convinced that the "violent aggressors •••prominently scattered across the pages of O'Connor 's fiction •••portray the evil freak that any man without redemption may become" (156).