SOURCE: "The Domestic Dynamics of Flannery O'Connor: Everything That Rises Must Converge," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring, 1992, pp. 66-88.

In the following essay, Wyatt discusses the domestic center of O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge.

By her own avowal, Flannery O'Connor writes from a fixed perspective of Christian orthodoxy. "I write the way I do," she insists, "because (not though) I am a Catholic" and adds that all her stories "are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to accept it."

Her view that her stories are all of a piece clearly is not shared by many of her readers and critics, especially those outside her faith who have interpreted her works in ways that she would consider severe distortions of her materials and aims. For example, a variety of O'Connor's critics have expressed reservations ranging from doubt as to...