Long before the feminist movement of the 1900’s, one young female writer implemented the feministic ideals seen in today’s society in nearly all of her short stories. Because her old soul was born before her time, these feministic ideals were hidden in the shadows of her syntax. Flannery O’Connor, if she knew what name to put to it or not, was an infant runner in feminism. Within her short stories, O’Connor’s aggressive yonic symbols and dominant maternal characters supported her feministic disgust of patriarchal hegemony.
Although it was one not published until after her death, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” contains the most obvious evidence of Flannery O’Connor’s feminist ideals long before the actual feminist movement was among society. Rather than the short story itself, it is the title has the fiercest stroke of feminism. Feminism in its purest form is equality for both genders. As men have ruled society, it will only be nature’s course that women find themselves at the throne as well in due time. The men, or those who have ‘risen’ will soon be met with the upcoming opposite gender, and will converge. O’Connor recognized this, and slyly demonstrated so in her titular diction.
O’Connor shades the feminism with a central theme of racial discrimination. How early Flannery O’Connor came before the start of the movement is irrelevant, for even in her dying days, the young writer braided modern feminist ideals in all aspects of her southern gothic stories, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” being no exception. The way the male lead treats the woman that gave him life is so despicably beautiful in relationship to what O’Connor was aiming to accomplish with this short story. Lead character Julian blatantly tells his mother, “’Nobody in the damn bus cares who you are” and is met with the icy but independent response of, “’I care who I am." In her final moments, it is as though a flip is switched in Julian’s head, as he regresses to his childhood and begins begging for his mother to stay alive. This theme is repeated with a character in “Good Country People,” for the return to immaturity shows the idiocy behind patriarchal hegemony, demonstrating those who oppress the feminists and the liberal movement as nothing more than a child, not to be taken seriously.
I highly recommend listening to or reading "Everything That Rises Must Converge" among some of O'Connor's other short stories, so that you can decipher their meaning and come up with your own conclusion. Regardless of the type of impact O'Connor had on the feminist movement, at least she got the ball rolling in the best way she knew how. If this article is received well, there will be up to four more parts in the series, each dissecting a different short story of O'Connor's.
