| Flannery O'Connor(1925-1964)from American South is widely recognized as a master of the art of short stories.Comprising nineteen stories from her two published collections of short stories,A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories(1955)and Everything That Rises Must Converge(1965),plus another twelve that first appear in book form,The Complete Stories(1971)is the exhibition of her art.In The Complete Stories,fathers,husbands,and sons,who are generally the symbol of patriarchy,are often absent or weakened.Instead,mothers,wives,daughters,and other female characters become the leading or decisive characters in the stories.Living in a world psychologically rooted and historically upheld in the experiences of male authorities,women's real experiences and individual demands are long restrained.Besides,based on male-oriented criteria,women's sex differences appearing in the process of their self-definition and development are often labeled as their inadequacy or even failure in development.Getting rid of the supervision and control of men,women get the chance to liberate their nature,freely experience their own feelings and thoughts,and speak in their real voices.Thus,following the real voices of the female characters in The Complete Stories of O'Connor,this thesis attempts to analyze those characters' relationship nets to make an objective depiction of their development and discuss the possibility of achieving their liberation on the basis of American feminist,ethicist,and psychologist,Carol Gilligan's theory on women's psychology and development.The first chapter discusses the female characters' self-definition in The Complete Stories of O'Connor.According to Gilligan,because of their concern for relationships and caring nature as well as their long-term submission to men,women define their concept of self at the expense of suppressing self-desires and adhering to the so-called female virtues.This chapter is then divided into three sections,and the first one focuses on the mother-daughter relationships in “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” and“A Circle in the Fire”.In those stories,the mothers tend to nurture their daughters as continuous with themselves and then redefine themselves by means of it while the daughters accordingly combine their experiences of attachment with the formation of their concept of self and it finally leads to the loss of their personalities.The second section discusses the heroines' overdependence on relationships in the process of their self-definition in “A Late Encounter with the Enemy” and “Greenleaf”.Women are used to receive,obey,and maintain the values that the male authority inculcates with them,and they complete their self-definition with the help of the male authority's name.Many women have gradually noticed the obstacle to their self-definition and development caused by mechanical continuation of maternal experience and by blindly following the male opinions,and they have tried to take into account the expression of self-will and the concern for others in the process of their self-concept construction.The third section of this chapter,taking “Good Country People” and “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” as examples,explores the female characters' attempts to break the shackles and redefine themselves,and probes into the difficulties they encounter in their seeking for development.The second chapter explores the visions of responsibility and morality as well as the conditions of development of the female characters in The Complete Stories of O'Connor.Gilligan argues that women not only define themselves in a context of human relationship but also judge themselves in terms of their ability to care.Women's visions of morality or ethic are thus constructed on the basis of care.They not only play the role of nurturers,caretakers,or helpmates in a relationship,but also become the weavers of their networks of relationships.This chapter consists of two sections that respectively discuss women's different roles in the domestic and the public world by means of the case study of “The Enduring Chill” and other seven short stories,and then concludes women's visions of responsibility and morality as well as the predicament of their development.The third chapter interprets the pursuit for rights and for complete development of the female characters in The Complete Stories of O'Connor.The sorrow of personal experiences and the predicament of human relationships awaken women: maintaining the patriarchal order at the expense of eclipsing women's experience turns out to be adissociative split between women and men,as well as women and themselves.Women possess both the right and the ability to achieve their self-development,which suggests that besides their consideration for others and the society,they should care for themselves,make their own judgment,and claim their own rights at the same time.This chapter is divided into three sections: the first discusses the heroines' concerns for self-desires demonstrated by their refusal of motherhood in “A Stroke of Good Fortune”and “The River”;the second focuses on the heroines' defense of their actual needs by their fierce rebellion against the male authority in “A View of the Woods”,“The Barber”,and “Parker's Back”;and the third,taking “A Temple of the Holy Ghost”,“Revelation”,and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” as examples,concentrates on the heroines' psychological changes of re-recognizing and accepting themselves and later forming a more mature vision of development under the guidance of their religious meditation.In her grotesque artistic world,O'Connor introduces various charming but non-traditional females to her readers.A re-interpretation of those female characters based on Gilligan's theories on female psychology and development is conducive to a relatively objective and in-depth display of O'Connor's female consciousness,religious thinking,and moral ideals.Defining themselves as preparation,forming their visions of morality in exploration,and seeking development with practice,women in O'Connor's short stories manage to channel a feasible way towards liberation. |
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