Women's Day Special - The Brave New Woman

Young women are more liberated than ever, but they are paying a price for it

- Anjuly Mathai

MORALITY TAKES A BACKSEAT If life is a tragi-comedy, then no one knew it better than American fiction writer Flannery O’Connor. She skilfully used satire to depict the soul’s struggle for redemption. One of her favourite themes was upending notions of right and wrong. Morality, in her world, was self-righteousness turned upside-down. A perfect example would be her short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, which describes the encounter between a grandmother and a crook who calls himself ‘The Misfit’.

One of the grandmother’s favourite topics to soliloquise on is that of “conscience”. She dangles it over her family like the rod of perdition. Do this and you will face the wrath of God. Do that and your soul will rot in hell. Even the way she dresses while going for a car ride—in a navy blue dress with a small white polka dots and a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim—was so that “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady”. In stark contrast, the Misfit, whom the family encounters when they meet with an accident, did not have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on a pair of blue jeans that was too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. He spoke with a cockney accent and, unlike the grandmother, had no illusions about his own goodness.

“You could be honest too, if you’d only try,” the grandmother tells him in a desperate attempt to convert him. “Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time.”