The Geranium

“The Geranium” constitutes the first twenty pages of Flannery O’Connor’s master’s thesis, written during her time in the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Her first story as a promising writer, “The Geranium,” demonstrates the growing pains of a young author learning to hone her craft. Being a long way from her Georgia home, O’Connor captures the homesickness she felt at Iowa in Old Dudley’s character. In a letter written later to a friend that expresses O’Connor’s feelings during her first winter in Iowa (1945-1946), O’Connor writes, “I couldn’t though have written a story about my being homesick” (The Habit of Being, 204). Instead, she embodied her experience in “an old man who went to live in a New York slum – no experience of mine as far as old men and slums went” (204). After penning “The Geranium” during her first Iowa winter, the director of the Writers’ Workshop, Paul Engle, encouraged O'Connor to continue submitting her work for publication. In February 1947, she submitted “The Geranium” to Accent and was notified in March that it would be published in a summer 1946 issue of the magazine. Biographer Brad Gooch describes that O’Connor, excited by this news, “admitted to a fellow student that she had not begun to think of herself as a fiction writer until the respected literary magazine had taken her first story” (127).

While “The Geranium” immediately contains obvious racial elements, specifically through Old Dudley’s response to the new African American neighbor, the story also contains some Christian ideas. For instance, Dudley’s reference to his daughter’s sense of duty to take care of him marks the only potential religious implication in “The Geranium.” Dudley begins the story by reminiscing about his southern home, demonstrating the severity of his homesickness by not trying to cry in the way that “his throat was drawn taut. [...] There wasn’t much he could think of to think about that didn’t do his throat that way” (“Geranium,” 3). Dudley blames his daughter and her sense of duty for removing him from his home, revealed in the way his daughter “made his eyes feel like his throat. They’d get watery and she’d see. [...] She looked sorry for herself too; but she could er saved herself, Old Dudley thought, if she’d just have let him alone – let him stay where he was back home and not be so taken up with her damn duty” (3-4). Here, Dudley refers to the duty his daughter feels to care for her parent, a duty established in the Bible. The “first responsibility” of children, according to 1 Timothy 5:3-4, “is to show godliness at home and repay their parents by taking care of them. This is something that pleases God” (NLT). This Biblical passage concludes by stating that “those who won’t care for their relatives, especially those in their own household, have denied the true faith. Such people are worse than unbelievers” (1 Tim. 5.8 NLT). Therefore, Dudley concludes that his daughter only insists on caring for him in order to “please God,” which reveals the daughter’s awareness of Christianity and her potential subscription to the Bible’s teachings. However, as the ambiguous Biblical instruction to “take care” of one’s parents leaves this passage open to varied interpretation, readers conclude from Dudley’s extreme unhappiness that his daughter’s efforts to take care of him do more harm than good, ostensibly the opposite of the Bible’s intention.

Perhaps more important to O’Connor’s purpose for “The Geranium” than any religious implication, Dudley’s views toward and conversation with his daughter’s African American neighbor introduces race to the story. Specifically, interaction between Dudley and the African American neighbor accentuates the opposite views of the two characters in terms of race, Dudley representing conservative racial ideas while the African American represents progressive racial ideas. Scholar Val Larsen explains that O’Connor uses her characters to represent racial conflict “geographically – the conservatism in the South, the liberalism in the North” (88). Dudley’s shocked reaction to the African American neighbor helping him on the stairs solidifies the presence of contradictory views on race in the story, specifically as the African American says, “‘I’m going up anyway,’ he said. ‘I’ll help you.’ Old Dudley looked frantically around. The steps behind him seemed to close up. He was walking with the nigger up the stairs. The nigger was waiting for him on each step” (“Geranium,” 12). Dudley’s interaction with the African American concludes in the same way that it begins: leaving Dudley speechless. Therefore, this story “displays for the first time O’Connor’s usual ideological ambivalence, her unwillingness to embrace without reservation either liberalism, which isolates and alienates people, or racist conservatism, which denies the humanity of blacks” (Larsen 88). In the same way that references to Christian theology are almost nonexistent in “The Geranium,” O’Connor also refuses to take a firm stance on racial ideas, instead demonstrating indecision by showcasing both conservative and progressive perspectives regarding race.

Works Cited

Gooch, Brad. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor. New York, Little, Brown, 2009.

Holy Bible: New Living Translation. Translated by Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Tyndale House Publishers, 2015.

Larsen, Val. “Manor House and Tenement: Failed Communities South and North in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The Geranium.’” The Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, vol. 20, 1991, pp. 88-103. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26669854.

O'Connor, Flannery. “The Geranium.” The Complete Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971, pp. 3-14.

---. The Habit of Being. Edited by Sally Fitzgerald, New York City, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979.