Department or Program
English
Abstract
This thesis explores corporeality and its gendered and racial manifestations in the short fiction of Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). I posit that O’Connor’s preoccupation with concepts of “wholeness”— as seen in her frequent use of phallic imagery, her representation of non-normative bodies, and her physical and metaphorical bifurcations of characters—characterizes a discourse of religious selfhood centered in the conflict between the normative, enclosed body and the spiritual realm. Throughout many of her short stories, a desire for wholeness ultimately precludes her characters from knowing themselves and faith. Chapter One provides background on criticism of O’Connor’s work with particular emphasis on scholarship attended to her usage of disabled, grotesque, and abject bodies. Chapter Two brings existing corporeal discourse about O’Connor’s work in conversation with Julia Kristeva’s postmodern Lacanian feminist work. Chapter Three develops my analysis of corporeal themes in O’Connor’s fiction through a comparison with James Joyce’s short fiction. I examine the tropes of paralysis and hemiplegia in Joyce’s Dubliners, while offering new insights into the motif of bodies, disability, and queerness in his work. In Chapter Four, I turn to Toni Morrison’s work to report my account of representations of female corporeality in O’Connor’s work through a comparative analysis of the gendered and racialized dimensions of body difference in Morrison's novel and O’Connor’s “Good Country People”. In examining corporeal imagery and the tension between spirituality and a desire for bodily wholeness, this thesis seeks to reveal the complex interplay between physical identity and divine self-understanding.
Level of Access
Open Access
First Advisor
Osucha, Eden
Date of Graduation
5-2025
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Recommended Citation
Danahy, Margo, "“For This is My Body”: Abjection, Corporeality, and Religious Selfhood in the Short(er) Fiction of Flannery O'Connor, James Joyce, and Toni Morrison" (2025). Honors Theses. 509.
https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses/509
Number of Pages
121
