ENGL 4310

In class, we talked about how these letters show us the multiple aspects of Porter and O'Connor's personalities. This absolutely fascinates me. We have developed a kind of equation for O'Connor's stories: a stranger comes to town which subsequently causes someone's life to be turned upside down. We get comfortable knowing what will happen next while reading her stories, and I get to the point where I feel like I kind of know the author, although to a small degree. After reading her letters, though, I've realized that she has several "selves" and, unlike her stories, we cannot apply an equation to her and therefore cannot know her as intimately as we wish we could.

Chelsea mentioned in her blog how Porter called feminism a "slimy word," which was a little upsetting due to the fact that we like to classify her under the category of "feminist." As Chelsea pointed out, I'm sure a lot of this has to do with the fact that in the 50's, feminism had many negative connotations. But also, there were probably aspects of feminism that Porter did and did not agree with, and so she cannot be correctly classified under this title. Maybe the title of "feminist" is a kind of equation we like to place on people in order to categorize them in a way that we feel we can better understand them. Unfortunately, Porter is much too complex to be placed under a label and her mutiple selves won't condone it.

As I was reading O'Connor's letters, I became aware of a subtle change of voice from one letter to another. I mean, you can obviously still tell it's O'Connor speaking, but there is something a little bit different in the ways in which she addresses certain people. One of the biggest changes seems to be in her letters to Maryat Lee. I'm not sure what Maryat's relationship to O'Connor was, but, just from the way O'Connor writes to her, I get the impression that they are intimate friends. To me, there seems to be a playfulness about the way these women interact with one another. In one of her letters, O'Connor writes to Maryat, saying "you didn't know I had a DREAD DISEASE didja? Well I got one" (1063) and goes on to make light of her sitution. At the end of this same letter, there is a little drawing of a skull and crossed bones. The skull is smiling, again making light of the fact that O'Connor knows she will likely die at a young age. Instances like this can be compared with her writings to A. These letters to A. seem much more formal than the letters to Maryat. In them, O'Connor talks a lot about her work and also about the authors she is reading or has read. It seems that A. is her "literary" friend and Maryat is her "buddy" friend. Nearly everyone she writes to will have their own category as they relate to her, making it impossible to produce a single title that will effectively define Flannery O'Connor.