"One of my babies": the misfit and the grandmother

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1996 by Stephen C. Bandy

O'Connor did not exactly defend the Grandmother's selfish behavior; but the writer famously described this final gesture as "the action of grace in the Grandmother's soul" (Mystery and Manners 113). Following O'Connor's suggestion, other commentators have elaborated upon the doctrine of grace as it might appear in this episode, sometimes with surprising results: Robert H. Brinkmeyer urges, "No longer just a silly old lady, she reaches out in a Christ-like gesture to touch the Misfit, declaring he is one of her children" (161).

The doctrine of grace has caused endless trouble in the historic theological debates of the Church. Grace is not to be invoked lightly, particularly in a secular milieu. Even now there is no settled interpretation; through the centuries the Church has entertained a variety of views regarding the mechanics of grace. To bring the complex machinery of this theological abstraction into the alien world of the Grandmother and the Misfit is more than inappropriate. It is inapplicable. What does in fact happen in this part of the story is quite straightforward: the Grandmother, having exhausted all other appeals to the Misfit, resorts to her only remaining (though certainly imperfect) weapon: motherhood. Declaring to the Misfit that he is one of her babies, she sets out to conquer him. Perhaps she hopes that this ultimate flattery will melt his heart, and he will collapse in her comforting motherly embrace. Such are the stratagems of sentimentality. The moral shoddiness of her action is almost beyond description. If we had not already guessed the depths to which the Grandmother might sink, now we know. It is not easy to say who is the more evil, the Misfit or the Grandmother, and indeed that is the point. Her behavior is the manifest of her character.

It has been said that no action is without its redeeming aspect. Could this unspeakable act of selfishness carry within it the seeds of grace, acting, as it were, above the Grandmother? So Flannery O'Connor believed. But what is the precise movement of grace in this scene? It is surely straining the text to propose that the Grandmother has in this moment "seen the light." Are we to regard her as the unwitting agent of divine grace whose selfish intentions are somehow transfigured into a blessing? Such seems to have been O'Connor's opinion:

. . . however unlikely this may seem, the old lady's gesture, like the

mustard-seed, will grow to be a great crow-filled tree in the Misfit's

heart, and will be enough of a pain to him there to turn him into

the prophet he was meant to become. (Mystery and Manners 113)

We are almost persuaded to forget that none of this happens in the story itself. If this can be so, then we can just as easily attribute any interpretation we like to the scene. But in fact he is in no way changed, There is no "later on" in fiction. We do not, and will not, see "created grace" in the spirit of the Misfit.

But more important, this is not the way grace works. As we read in the New Catholic Encyclopedia: