O’connor Biography

Inspiration from Convalescence

(Mary) Flannery O’Connor was an only thirty-nine years old when she died in 1964 from complications of a degenerative disease. O’Connor spent much of her adult life with a debilitating illness, convalescing on the family farm until her untimely death. O’Connor’s passion for writing never diminished, and she continued to create despite her weakening health. O’Connor’s literary fortitude was sustained by her strength of character and the acceptance of her illness as providence.

Flannery O’Connor was an outwardly healthy child who was influenced by her Catholic education. O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925, the only child of a prominent Savannah family. Her Irish immigrant great-grandparents had settled in the area nearly a century before. She attended school in Savannah and learned scripture while attending Catholic parochial school. O’Connor would later recollect about the misconception that she was an ill child: “I am wondering where you got the idea that my childhood was full of endless illnesses. Besides the usual measles, chickenpox and mumps, I was never sick” (5 March 1960). Throughout her high school years, she remained healthy. As a young adult, Flannery O’Connor attended public high school in Milledgeville, where the family moved after her father developed lupus, the degenerative disease that she later inherited. Soon after her father's death, O'Connor entered a nearby prestigious liberal arts college, Georgia State College for Women, where she majored in social sciences. O'Connor then enrolled in the graduate program at Iowa State University, where she earned her Master's degree in 1947. After graduate school, O’Connor accepted an invitation to write at an artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was during this time that her health began to fail and she had to undergo surgery in December 1949 (Fitzgerald 1242).

Flannery O’Connor’s illness and the acceptance of her limitations enabled her to write eloquently: “She now set about making the most she could of both her gift and her circumstances, from day to day” (qtd. in Fitzgerald 53). Her independent lifestyle ended abruptly at the age of twenty-five. In 1951, she was diagnosed with disseminated lupus. From that point, O’Connor was more or less confined to a dairy farm in Andalusia, where she lived with her mother until she died. One consolation of her confinement was that her convalescence afforded O’Connor the latitude in which to write her best works. She never viewed her illness as a barrier to creativity. In a letter to �A’, O'Connor wrote: "Sickness is a place more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it’s always a place where there’s no company" (28 June 1956). Her productivity was admirable, writing two novels and a collection of stories even though her health had declined. Another consolation was that O’Connor loved the farm. She had an obsession for fowl and especially loved peacocks that she raised there. O’Connor was never married, and never had children other than her beloved birds. She was given only five years to live, but she managed to live another thirteen after being diagnosed. O’Connor died on August 3, 1964. Together with writing, some lecturing, and corresponding to her many admirers, O’Connor made the best of her short life by doing what she loved to do.

Regional and religious influences shaped O’Connor’s literary reputation. The name Flannery O'Connor has become synonymous with Southern literature. Furthermore, her reputation contributed to John Selby describing her as: “stiff-necked, uncooperative, and unethical” (qtd. in Fitzgerald 1244). O'Connor's stories often expressed intense action while relating to her devout Catholic