SOURCE: Schleifer, Ronald. “Rural Gothic: The Sublime Rhetoric of Flannery O'Connor.” In Frontier Gothic: Terror and Wonder at the Frontier in American Literature, edited by David Moden, Scott P. Sanders, and Joanne B. Karpinski, pp. 175-86. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1993.

In the following essay, Schliefer proposes that O'Connor effectively uses the backdrop of the rural South and combines it with elements of the supernatural to present a world of powerful possibilities in her fiction.

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners … We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and...