Graduation Year
Spring 2013
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
English
Reader 1
Cheryl Walker
Reader 2
John Peavoy
Rights Information
© 2013 Michelle M. Christovich
Abstract
In this paper, I will examine works of Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Carson McCullers, three Southern women writers who wrote during the first half of the twentieth century. While these authors differ in a number of ways, each of them produced work that deals, often explicitly, with ideal Southern womanhood and the expectations this ideal places upon women. Additionally, each of these three authors uses the grotesque as a tool for examining ideal womanhood, most often represented through the ideal of the Southern Lady. This paper is concerned with analyzing the link between the grotesque and the ideal of the Southern Lady, specifically the ways in which O’Connor, Welty, and McCullers employ the grotesque as a tool for exposing the limiting and destructive nature of this ideal.
Recommended Citation
Christovich, Michelle M., "Eloquent Distortion: The Southern Grotesque and Ideal Femininity in the works of Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and Carson McCullers" (2013). Scripps Senior Theses. 206.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/206
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
