Flannery O’Connor was born in Georgia and spent her youth in the South. With her keen skill for observation, O’Connor wrote about human behavior, particularly human foibles, and her writing became known as part of the Southern Gothic school—a group that also includes Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Harper Lee. These writers draw on the European Gothic literary tradition to critique society in the South—specifically, the hypocrisy of southerners and the moral decay of the era.

The South was built on slavery, creating the region’s paradoxical character. Some people lived in beautiful mansions and practiced elaborate manners to distinguish their economic status as “ladies and gentlemen.” Another group lived in squalor and were bought and sold as animals, severely overworked, and abused when they aroused displeasure. While the slaveholders presented themselves as refined, educated, and moral, they used violence to maintain power over the humans they kept in bondage for personal profit.

Even after the American Civil War, this dichotomy persisted and, in some ways, worsened. In the post-Reconstruction era, African Americans could theoretically vote and slavery was illegal, but society was deeply segregated. White people continued to brutalize Black people politically, economically, and, in many instances, physically.