Southern Gothic In Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor is named as one of the most creative and attractive women writers since WWII of all the American Southern women writers. Although in the vein of Hawthorne and Faulkner, her"Southern Gothic"has its splendid features—her characters and works'environments are deeply planted in the South; her themes mainly focus on expressing the wonder and alienation of modern Southern people; and her purpose is on displaying the necessity of seeking for a spiritual residence.The thesis consists of five parts. In the beginning, a brief introduction of O'Connor is given. In the second section, the tradition and developmental history of Gothic fictions both in British and American literature are provided; its features, reasons of existence, and standards of sublimity are explored. In the third section, O'Connor's Southern Gothic is fully studied. With the hand of Psychoanalytic analysis, it is not difficult to learn that O'Connor's child rearing, unique life experience and Southern background promote her favor in Gothic fictions. The issues of her unique forms, such as freaks and lunatics, isolation, displacement and homelessness, violence and religious enthusiasm, are carefully analyzed and depicted in this part. The fourth section mainly addresses O'Connor's creativity in Southern Gothic fictions. Compared with her predecessors, O'Connor has own novelty and development, especially in the female grotesqueries. In the end, the evaluation of O'Connor is given and the possible future research directions are indicated.In short, O'Connor's Southern Gothic maintains the same core with the traditional Gothic fictions—displaying the conflicts between the good and the bad, conducting the exploration of morality, exposing the evils which threaten human and make them fall. The significance lies in that O'Connor tries to raise human's attention of this universal theme, to realize the crisis they are confronting with, and the need of being solved as soon as possible.