White trash, low class, and no class at all: Perverse portraits of phallic power in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood

Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 1997 by Paige, Linda Rohrer

When he finished, he was like something washed ashore on her, and she made obscene comments about him, which he remembered off and on during the day. He was uneasy in the thought of going to her again. He didn't know what she would say when he opened the door and she saw him there. (31 )

Further, Mrs. Watts manifests a type of "phallic power" for cutting through to truth, a power which highlights Haze's own ineptitude for sinning. Even her grin, described as "curved and sharp as the blade of a sickle" (31), exacerbates Haze's worst nightmares. The final assault of Mrs. Watts stealthily occurs in the night, when Delilah-like, the whore gets up while Haze sleeps and "cut[s] out the top of his hat . . . in an obscene shape" (57). Though O'Connor doesn't stipulate the shape, she hints at its religious significance (for Hazel) by virtue of its obscenity. Similar to his biblical counterpart, Samson, Motes loses strength in his resolve as the "blade of the sickle" releases an hitherto unseen shape in his hat.

Copulation with Sabbath Lily proves no more successful than with Mrs. Watts, as Hawk's daughter confirms her father's opinion of Haze as a `Jesus hog" (56); she confesses later that from the outset of their relationship-in fact, the first time she ever saw him-she knew that he "didn't want nothing but Jesus" (96).

When humans no longer satisfy Haze's phallic drive, he buys himself the ultimate phallic weapon, an old Essex, a car which he claims doesn't need "to be justified" (58). Instead of sleeping with another human being, O'Connor's protagonist sleeps with his car-and in his car-burrowing into its recesses and ignoring the world outside its oval shaped back window. The phallic car imitates the sexual act itself:

The Essex had a tendency to develop a tic by nightfall. It would go forward about six inches and then back about four; it did that now a succession of times rapidly; otherwise Haze would have shot off in it and been gone. He had to grip the steering wheel with both hands to keep from being thrown either out of the windshield or into the back. It stopped this after a few seconds and slid about twenty feet and then began it again. (79)

Just as Haze once bragged that he didn't need redemption because he had Mrs. Watts, he now glories in the possession of his rat-colored car, which for him exhibits both utilitarian and spiritual value: "I wanted this car mostly to be a house for me," Haze remarks (37). Thus, the car merges the functional and the religious, representing the embodiment of both home and temple.

Abandoning all notions of seducing Sabbath Lily, Haze expels her altogether from the vehicle, complaining that she "spoils" his "rides" (74). Metaphorically, Haze has taken the "humanity" out of the sexual act itself. By expelling the female, he subconsciously believes that no more visionaries can thrust truth upon him. Despite the fact that the needle on the dashboard points dizzily one direction, then another, seemingly working on a "private system independent of the whole car" (64), Haze continues to blind himself to the signs from God. Just as the Israelites followed a cloud or pillar, Haze ultimately begins to notice from his car's window the "blinding white cloud" (61 ), which transforms into the shape of an old man with a beard and into "a bird with long thin wings" (65). No longer can he ignore God's signs, even in the mechanized protection of the Essex.