The Female Characters in Flannery O´Connor´s Selected Short Stories: Cause and Effect
| Thesis title in Czech: | Ženské postavy ve vybraných povídkách Flannery O´Connorové: příčina a následek |
|---|---|
| Thesis title in English: | The Female Characters in Flannery O´Connor´s Selected Short Stories: Cause and Effect |
| Key words: | Flannery O´Connorová|povídky|historie a společnost amerického Jihu|gotika|groteska|jižanská kráska |
| English key words: | Flannery O´Connor|history and society of the American South|short stories|Gothic|grotesque|Southern belle |
| Academic year of topic announcement: | 2022/2023 |
| Thesis type: | diploma thesis |
| Thesis language: | angličtina |
| Department: | Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK) |
| Supervisor: | PhDr. Hana Ulmanová, Ph.D. |
| Author: | hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept. |
| Date of registration: | 24.06.2023 |
| Date of assignment: | 28.06.2023 |
| Administrator's approval: | approved |
| Confirmed by Study dept. on: | 28.06.2023 |
| Submitted/finalized: | no |
| Guidelines |
| The aim of this thesis is to point out the social and historical causes behind the prominent inadequacies of female characters in the following Flannry O´Connor´s short stories: A Good Man Is Hard to Find, A Late Encounter with the Enemy, The Life You Safe May Be Your Own, Good Country People and Everything That Rises Must Converge. It will be shown that these characters invariably end up being morally and spiritually flawed, exhibiting mainly hypocrisy, superficiality, selfishness, inability to adapt to the change and move out of the past. Interdisciplinary approach will be used: with the emphasis on Southern history, political context and society first, then proceeding to Southern Gothic, Southern Grotesque and the distortion of the Southern Belle character in fiction written after the Civil War. In conclusion, the thesis will prove - referring to the whole body of Flannery O´Connor´s works - that the constant presence and focus on the flawed female characters is not a mere coincidence, but instead an indirect critique of the issues that ended up destabilising America to the point of the Civil War. |
| References |
| Harpham, Geoffrey. "The Grotesque: First Principles." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 34, no. 4, 1976 Kayser, Wolfgang: The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Columbia University Press, 1981 McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Ptress, 2003 Phillips, Ulrich Bonnel. Life and Labor in the Old South. University of South Carolina Press, 2007 Spiegel, Alan. "A Theory of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." The Goergia Review, vol. 26, no. 4, 1972 Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. W. W. Norton Company, 2005 |