Our father who art in heaven, our mother who art on earth: Flannery O'Connor and the culture of mother blame

The works of Flannery O'Connor have continued to rise in critical esteem in the decades following her death. Recently, concerns about her understanding of feminism and political and social consciousness have emerged. Ubiquitous studies utilizing Freudian (and Jungian) hermeneutics determine that the mother-child relationships portrayed in O'Connor's fiction are problematic and reductive. Very often, an autobiographical genesis is suggested for these fictive situations; some even claim that O'Connor's relationship with her own mother was the tortured and destructive source from which her fiction derives its tension and disturbing violence. For many critics, the mother figures of Wise Blood, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Everything That Rises Must Converge—even The Violent Bear It Away—are failing humans who subsequently bring destruction to their children's lives as well.; But these studies ignore O'Connor's declared inclusion in her narratives of a moment of grace, revelation, even outright salvation which corresponds to her Catholic view of the world. The insistence that the majority of children's problems are the fault of the mother, “mother blame,” grows directly out of Freudian analysis; most psychoanalytical/feminist studies of O'Connor conclude that she reinforces patriarchal values and fails to assimilate feminist goals with her avowed religious foundations.; Yet, examination reveals O'Connor's works underscore both feminism and theology. Her fiction takes Freudian misconceptions to task, in particular rejecting the “fantasy” of the perfect mother. Her Christian view of mankind as “fallen” relieves unrealistic cultural expectations, allowing re-evaluation of some of the mother-child relationships as positive. Most importantly, O'Connor uncovers the ways in which the mother acts as receptacle for the child's moment of grace, the earthly place and moment in time where God meets man—Teilhard de Chardin's “omega points.” Repeatedly O'Connor's children come face to face with their spiritual destinies, doing so primarily through interactions with their mothers or a mother figure. Instead of adhering to the mother-blaming practices of her contemporaries, O'Connor appropriates and parodies those misconceptions to avail greater truths by framing a perception of the world which includes beliefs about life beyond death, or—in her words—a “reality of distance.”...