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Although O’Connor didn’t care for the label, her writing defined the Southern Gothic genre of American literature. Southern Gothic authors typically come from the American South. They set their stories in the region and often focus on its tensions and peculiarities. Southern Gothic first sprung up in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. The Union army had destroyed Southern cities, torn up railroads, and burned plantations and farms. The Confederacy’s defeat seriously damaged Southern pride. Although the war ended the centuries-long institution of slavery, the more than four million freed African Americans still faced discrimination and violence.
After World War II, America experienced another wave of social change. The American South was at the center of much of it, especially the growing civil rights movement, but the scars of the Civil War were still present. Racial tensions simmered. Southern whites still treated African Americans like second-class citizens. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The next year, Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Southern whites used violence and intimidation to resist desegregation.
Although O’Connor did not often write explicitly about race, her short stories exposed the dark underside of Southern gentility. Primarily penned on her mother’s former cotton plantation, her stories unfolded against the backdrop of the post-World War II era. Despite the ongoing civil rights movement, racial tensions endured, and Southern whites resisted desegregation. O’Connor’s stories subtly touched on racial issues, bringing to light the darker facets of Southern gentility and underscoring the contradictions in the region’s history. The farm served as a symbol of this complexity, adding depth to her portrayal of the South.
Employment was on the rise for women in the 1950s, but society and the media still stressed the woman’s role in the home. The U.S. marriage rate was at an all-time high. Women were getting married younger, often straight out of high school. An unmarried woman in her mid-20s was called an “old maid,” unlikely to ever marry or have children. Both Hulga from “Good Country People” and Flannery O’Connor defied society’s expectations by graduating from college and remaining unmarried and childless.
Like most Southern Gothic literature, O’Connor’s stories embody a strong, regional sense of place. She peels back the affected elegance of Southern culture to reveal unsettling truths. Seemingly normal places hold strange, sometimes violent, secrets. Southern Gothic characters often bear physical deformities that are outward markers of internal corruption. Although many Southern Gothic stories contain supernatural elements, O’Connor eschewed them in favor of real-life, often uncomfortable, situations.
