In discussing O'Connor's Wise Blood with her class, Amy Hungerford separates the depiction of body, specifically the female body as being a thing all parts and no whole, from a Christian framework and places it within a feminist one. I think this is a grave mistake. They are related, but the feminist view needs to be rooted within the staunch Catholicism that O'Connor espoused. This depiction of grotesqueness, as something which causes aversion, that makes us want to shrink away, that in certain cases conjures the images of parts on the floor of butcher shop or a murder scene is a sort of warning about sexual power. Sexual power, within the context of art, culture and religion, is something that has historically been almost exclusively female. It's why in Christian Evangelical revival communities, women wear shapeless sacks, or why Muslim women cover themselves up -- the power of their figure to excite is something both selfishly cherished (to be shared only with the husband) and something to be feared, because it leads down the devil's path. A women doesn't lead an army, but lust can make a general do crazy fucking things. So we're getting a viewpoint of the body, as say, Pope Innocent III would have us view it:
Man was formed of dust, slime, and ashes: what is even more vile, of the filthiest seed. He was conceived from the itch of the flesh, in the heat of passion and the stench of lust, and worst yet, with the stain of sin. He was born to toil, dread, and trouble; and more wretched still, was born only to die. He commits depraved acts by which he offends God, his neighbor, and himself; shameful acts by which he defiles his name, his person, and his conscience; and vain acts by which he ignores all things important, useful, and necessary. He will become fuel for those fires which are forever hot and burn forever bright; food for the worm which forever nibbles and digests; a mass of rottenness which will forever stink and reek...
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Man is conceived of blood made rotten by the heat of lust; and in the end worms, like mourners, stand about his corpse. In life he produced lice and tapeworms; in death he will produce worms and flies. In life he produced dung and vomit; in death he produces rottenness and stench. In life he fattened one man; in death he fattens a multitude of worms. What then is more foul than a human corpse? What is more horrible than a dead man? He whose embrace was pure delight in life will be a gruesome sight in death.
Of what advantage, then, are riches, food, and honors? For riches will not free us from death, neither food protect us from the worm nor honors from the stench. that man who but now sat in glory upon the throne is now looked down on in the grave; the dandy who once glittered in his palace lies now naked and vile in his tomb; and he who supped once on delicacies in his hall is now in his sepulcher food for worms...
This, I think, is how we should look at O'Connor's work, and not, at least primarily, through the lens of myriad ritual and abuses to which southern women had to subject themselves to in order to attain the cultural trappings of beauty.
I think Hungerford gets back on track when she starts talking about O'Connor's fight with lupus, and the distortion of her own body.
Blah blah blah.
If that made any sense, I'll give myself a star sticker later.
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