Sacred groves and ravaged gardens
Subtitle: the fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor
By: Louise Westling.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 1985
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 217
Subjects: Welty, Eudora, 1909-  -- Criticism and interpretation; McCullers, Carson, 1917-1967 -- Criticism and interpretation; O'Connor, Flannery -- Criticism and interpretation; American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Women and literature -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century; American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism; American fiction -- Southern States -- History and criticism; Landscape in literature; Southern States -- In literature
Description: 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.-publisher description.
Notes: Bibliography: p. [197]-208.
Includes index.