ISSN:
0021-8758
Source:
Cambridge Journals Digital Archives
Topics:
English, American Studies
,
History
,
Political Science
,
Sociology
,
Economics
Notes:
Writing in her autobiography about Southern fiction at the turn of the century, Ellen Glasgow argued that it needed more violence and toughness to counteract its tendency towards “insidious” sentimentality; as she defined it later, such literature could be redeemed only by “Blood and irony.” Nearly fifty years later, she might have been gratified to see how a fellow Southern woman writer had answered this need. Violence and irony are endemic in O'Connor's short stories, which depict brutality, physical abuse, murder, and betrayal perpetrated by characters who are often termed “grotesques” –physical freaks, idiots, and maniacs. But they owe their striking impact not only to the violence which they embody in terms of character and event, but also to the violence which they enact on the reader. They implement a shock technique, dependent not so much on the nature of the fictional material, whose horrorsare objectified by a skilfully controlled comic/ironic tone, as on exploitation of the reader's preconceptions.The disjunctions of the stories, which "work," in O'Connor's words, by portraying "an action that is totally unexpected,"are reproduced in the reader's subjection to an abrupt shattering of expectation, producing a profound sense of unease or bewilderment. Thus the most exceptional and original aspect of the violence in O'Connor's fiction is found in its manipulative relationship with the audience who,as one critic has expressed it, may feel "cheated,"4 not to say victimized,by the author's mocking tyranny.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S002187580001505X
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