Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor [Paperback]

Louise Westling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1986

In Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens, Louise Westling explores how the complex, difficult roles of women in southern culture shaped the literary worlds of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor. Tracing the cultural heritage of the South, Westling shows how southern women reacted to the violent, false world created by their men--a world in which women came to be shrouded as icons of purity in atonement for the sins of men. Exposing the actual conditions of women's lives, creating assertive protagonists who resist or revise conventional roles, and exploring rich matriarchal traditions and connections to symbolic landscapes Welty, McCullers, and O'Connor created a body of fiction that enriches and complements the patriarchal version of southern life presented in the works of William Faulkner, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and William Styron.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An engaging study . . . by and large, a worthy addition to the Southern literature shelf."--Studies in the Novel

"A very fine book . . . [Westling] provides us with a good deal to ponder not only about the Southern literary experience but also about how we all live."--American Literature

"Sacred Groves is well written and handsomely produced. The readings, usually lively and sensible, are informed with biographical and critical details that are especially interesting as they connect the three writers to each other."--Studies in Short Fiction

"Louise Westling's Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens is a welcome addition to criticism of American literature. . . . Westling's well-written book has the strengths of the best work in this American feminist mainstream."--Novel: A Forum on Fiction

"At last a critic has assessed the works of Welty, McCullers, and O'Connor from the standpoint of the writers' common background, with its inherent curses and blessings. Westling conducts her study with exceptional skill, a deep feminist sensibility, and a genuine respect for these authors, who have given us what Faulkner could not: the southern woman's story.”--Belles Lettres

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Louise Westling is a professor of English at the University of Oregon. Her books include The Green Breast of the New World: Landscape, Gender, and American Fiction (Georgia).

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr (January 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820308315
• ISBN-13: 978-0820308319
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,630,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Considers the roles expected of Southern women and how they influenced the art and lives of O'Connor, Welty and Carson McCullers, July 26, 2008

By 

R. Neil Scott "Writer, Professor & User Servi... (Murfreesboro, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor (Paperback)

Westling examines the roles expected of Southern women and suggests how these roles may have shaped the lives and art of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor.

Discusses how each reacted to the expected place of women, using evidence found in their letters, fiction, and lives. Sees each as having countered an "ambiguous" inheritance "by creating [her] own rich matriarchal traditions" through art. Contends that, collectively, their fiction serves as a denial of "the patriarchal version of Southern life" presented by such authors as William Faulkner, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and William Styron.

Concentrates on their concerns as women, specifically "their treatment of the problems of identity, on attitudes toward the mother, on the ways in which men are perceived, and on the distinctly female uses of place and symbol in their stories." Argues that whereas Welty celebrates womankind, O'Connor and McCullers struggle against it.

Sees Flannery O'Connor's "sour and resentful" children "as emblems of their mothers' debilitating power" who "set themselves at odds" with them "in resistance to femininity." Observes that, of all the daughters O'Connor created through her art, only the retarded Lucynell Crater is "at ease with her feminine self."

Includes careful explications of "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" (with comparisons to McCuller's The Member of the Wedding and "Good Country People"; a discussion of the "sexual dimension" of O'Connor's stories and her use of religious solutions "to the problem of feminine identity"; differences between O'Connor's male ("aggressive and vindictive") and female ("rendered passive by punishment") characters; and, the influence of the hostile legal and business environment faced by post-Civil War Southern widows on O'Connor's portrayal of them.

Characterizes O'Connor's mother-daughter relationships in discussions of O'Connor's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," "Why Do the Heathen Rage," "A Circle in the Fire," "Revelation," and "A Stroke of Good Fortune."

Notes Flannery O'Connor's familiarity with Thomas Bulfinch's Mythology, comparative mythology, and Greek tragedy (through Robert Fitzgerald's work), and suggests that this knowledge influenced her fictional landscapes and her depiction of groves, meadows, pastures, and the protective woods surrounding farms ruled by women.

Ties men's incursions onto these farms to sexual imagery and seduction patterns, arguing that the "pattern and tone of action in O'Connor's farm stories" is close to "the archetypal rape images of Greek mythology." Discusses "Greenleaf" and "A Circle in the Fire" to illustrate why the persistent appearance of fertility myths "creates tensions in the stories which O'Connor's craft cannot resolve."

Concludes that while O'Connor's fiction "is an achievement of the first order in literary terms, she also wrote stories "where problems of female sexual identity twist plots away from their intended shapes and where feminine assertion is continually punished by masculine assaults which distort ancient mythic patterns associating women with the landscape."

R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University