O'Connor Biography

Inspiration from Convalescence
(Mary) Flannery O’Connor was an only thirty-nine years old when she died in 1964 from complications of a degenerative disease. O’Connor spent much of her adult life with a debilitating illness, convalescing on the family farm until her untimely death. O’Connor’s passion for writing never diminished, and she continued to create despite her weakening health. O’Connor’s literary fortitude was sustained by her strength of character and the acceptance of her illness as providence.
  Flannery O’Connor was an outwardly healthy child who was influenced by her Catholic education.   O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925, the only child of a prominent Savannah family.   Her Irish immigrant great-grandparents had settled in the area nearly a century before.   She attended school in Savannah and learned scripture while attending Catholic parochial school.   O’Connor would later recollect about the misconception that she was an ill child:   “I am wondering where you got the idea that my childhood was full of endless illnesses.   Besides the usual measles, chickenpox and mumps, I was never sick” (5 March 1960).   Throughout her high school years, she remained healthy.   As a young adult, Flannery O’Connor attended public high school in Milledgeville, where the family moved after her father developed lupus, the degenerative disease that she later inherited.   Soon after her father's death, O'Connor entered a nearby prestigious liberal arts college, Georgia State College for Women, where she majored in social sciences.   O'Connor then enrolled in the graduate program at Iowa State University, where she earned her Master's degree in 1947. After graduate school, O’Connor accepted an invitation to write at an artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was during this time that her health began to fail and she had to undergo surgery in December 1949 (Fitzgerald 1242).
Flannery O’Connor’s illness and the acceptance of her limitations enabled her to write...