COMPLICIT AUTHORITIES AND CAPITALIST HAUNTINGS: POLITICAL LEADERSHIP IN O'CONNOR'S GOTHIC CRITIQUE OF PROGRESS

Abstract

Employing a Gothic Marxist lens, this paper argues that in Flannery O'Connor's "A View of the Woods," the dual trope serves as an essential tool for exposing the dysfunctional connection between inadequate political authority and capitalist oppression. An in-depth textual and theoretical analysis indicates that the conflict regarding the family pasture transcends a mere personal dispute; instead, it acts as a metaphor for the "creative destruction" inherent in a progress ideology upheld by a self-serving elite. Besides exposing class struggle, the reflected identities of the landholder, Mr. Fortune, and his working-class granddaughter, Mary Fortune Pitts, also emphasize the oppressor's mental dependence on the oppressed. This examination, which integrates O'Connor's Gothic sensibility with concepts of the alienated "political field" (Pierre Bourdieu) and the "power elite" (C. Wright Mills), concludes that the narrative provides a scathing criticism of a political establishment that is involved in its own estrangement. Ultimately, it showcases a leadership that rationalizes the commercialization of human and natural connections as a force that severs essential communal bonds, resulting in social and spiritual decay instead of collective advancement