Turpin's Identity

Ya Know, People Should Have an Identity Outside of Class Too
The grotesque and class-structures, two concepts that seem rather strange when attached to one another, seem even more bizarre when linked within the works of a “southern belle.” Nonetheless, Flannery O’Connor brilliantly molds together the grotesque and ideas of class in her short fiction to form this amazing vision of the American South. Along with her biting wit, creepy situations, and disgusting people, O’Connor utilizes class in creating the narratives for her stories and in formulating the identities for her characters. Specifically, in her stories “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” “Revelation,” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” her main characters, all thinking themselves …show more content…
Turpin’s identity and her perceptions of others consists of the ordered class system that she perceives as perfectly just. Akin to the namelessness of the protagonist of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Mrs. Turpin, a woman nearly exclusively defined by her marriage to her husband, a significant characterization in itself, describes people with such terms as “the pleasant lady,” “the ugly girl,” or “the white-trashy mother,” fitting them inside her own prejudiced social structure. Her racism and classism also come out in her question of “who she would have chosen to be if she couldn't have been herself. If Jesus had said to her before he made her, ‘There's only two places available for you. You can either be a nigger or white trash,’ what would she have said?” (4). This question not only shows her perceptions of others and the fact that she views the world through a rather religious lens, but also the position in which she puts herself: above most others and in the graces of Jesus and God. Mrs. Turpin’s religious beliefs blend with her vision of class, because she most prominently believes, until the titular revelation at the close of the story, that the lower class is lesser the eyes of God above just as it is in the eyes of people below. This detached and ephemeral view of class reflects the general Southern attitude towards women that “[w]hile the southern white woman’s value was invested in her body, she was at the same time …show more content…
Although mainly focusing on the son and his horrifying behavior towards everyone, this story most prominently shows that the old, racist woman’s identity is inextricable from bigotry. From her proclamation that black people “were better off when they were [slaves],” (3) to her condescension in offering a penny to a child just because he happens to be black, her unyielding racism and bigotry takes center-stage in her role. The defining moment of her identity crisis occurs when the mother of the child runs off without her penny, and Julian’s mother suffers a stroke and seemingly dies on the spot. The fact that the demise of her bigotry results in her own demise shows that this aspect of her behavior encompasses her entire identity. As she falls, her call to “the old darky who was [her] nurse, Caroline” (4) reveals some sort of repentance for her unrepentant classism and bigotry, but as it comes too late for her, no true good can arise from it. In that context, the sudden dismantling of her bigotry parallels a slow rejection of the class-structure in that “O’Connor’s fiction challenge[s] idealized and, needless to say, oppressive visions of white southern woman hood – the

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