Flannery O Connor's Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic is a style of writing developed during the nineteenth century in the Southern parts of the United States which would be unlike any other known at the time. One of its most famous authors truly made an impact on society with her writing. As Ginger Rodriguez said in Flannery O’Connor’s biography, she “wrote works of fiction that, once read, cannot be forgotten”. Flannery O’Connor was indeed a master of Southern Gothic writing.

O’Conor was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25, 1925. “As the only child of devout Catholic parents in the South, religion played a major role in her upbringing and helped shape her into the type of writer she would become” (Rodriguez). She grew up in a time where women were expected to get married and stay home, however, O’Connor decided to take a different route and enrolled in College to pursue an education. She had discovered her passion for writing when she was in High School and this served as her inspiration to continue learning. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in literature in 1947. Flannery O’Conor is considered one of the most famous writers of the Southern Gothic genre.

But what exactly is Southern Gothic? It is “A style of writing practiced by many writers of the American South whose stories set in that

A lot of her stories did not make sense, not in terms of how they were written but in trying to understand the reasoning behind why things happened the way they did. For example, a lot of her main characters met gruesome deaths or horrible endings. As explained by Ginger Rodriguez “Flannery O’Connor’s devout Catholicism plays a major role in her writing. O’Connor’s deep faith comes as a surprise to many readers who fail to see any aspects of religion in her dark outcomes and often-horrific plot” but O’Connor would argue that she would only have been able to write the stories after reflecting on the catholic morals which were instilled in