Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor

by Louise Westling

Book Overview

In Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens , Louise Westling explores how the complex, difficult roles of women in southern culture shaped the literary worlds of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 082033202X
• ISBN13: 9780820332024
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Considers the roles expected of Southern women and how they influenced the art and lives of O'Connor

Westling examines the roles expected of Southern women and suggests how these roles may have shaped the lives and art of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor. Discusses how each reacted to the expected place of women, using evidence found in their letters, fiction, and lives. Sees each as having countered an "ambiguous" inheritance "by creating [her] own rich matriarchal traditions" through art. Contends that, collectively, their fiction serves as a denial of "the patriarchal version of Southern life" presented by such authors as William Faulkner, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and William Styron. Concentrates on their concerns as women, specifically "their treatment of the problems of identity, on attitudes toward the mother, on the ways in which men are perceived, and on the distinctly female uses of place and symbol in their stories." Argues that whereas Welty celebrates womankind, O'Connor and McCullers struggle against it. Sees Flannery O'Connor's "sour and resentful" children "as emblems of their mothers' debilitating power" who "set themselves at odds" with them "in resistance to femininity." Observes that, of all the daughters O'Connor created through her art, only the retarded Lucynell Crater is "at ease with her feminine self." Includes careful explications of "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" (with comparisons to McCuller's The Member of the Wedding and "Good Country People"; a discussion of the "sexual dimension" of O'Connor's stories and her use of religious solutions "to the problem of feminine identity"; differences between O'Connor's male ("aggressive and vindictive") and female ("rendered passive by punishment") characters; and, the influence of the hostile legal and business environment faced by post-Civil War Southern widows on O'Connor's portrayal of them. Characterizes O'Connor's mother-daughter relationships in discussions of O'Connor's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," "Why Do the Heathen Rage," "A Circle in the Fire," "Revelation," and "A Stroke of Good Fortune." Notes Flannery O'Connor's familiarity with Thomas Bulfinch's Mythology, comparative mythology, and Greek tragedy (through Robert Fitzgerald's work), and suggests that this knowledge influenced her fictional landscapes and her depiction of groves, meadows, pastures, and the protective woods surrounding farms ruled by women. Ties men's incursions onto these farms to sexual imagery and seduction patterns, arguing that the "pattern and tone of action in O'Connor's farm stories" is close to "the archetypal rape images of Greek mythology." Discusses "Greenleaf" and "A Circle in the Fire" to illustrate why the persistent appearance of fertility myths "creates tensions in the stories which O'Connor's craft cannot resolve." Concludes that while O'Connor's fiction "is an achievement of the first order in literary terms, she also wrote stories "where problems of female sexual identity twist plots away from their intended shapes and where feminine