“What Is a Man?”: Disability, Domesticity, and Imperialism in Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”

Abstract

ABSTRACT Following the mode of cultural studies, this essay focuses on Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, a story that has been understudied, for her delineation of masculinity in the post-war United States. Reading the male protagonist’s question “what is a man?” as the American symptom after the global war, this essay reveals the complexity of the key trope of masculinity and its intersections with the unfair power structures in three aspects, namely ableism, sexism, and imperialism. It first examines the dialectic between the individual definition and the public opinion concerning the masculinity of a physically disabled man and unravels the hostility hidden under the veil of hospitality. Then it shows the historical reasons for the seemingly perpetual tension between the male and domesticity in this story, mainly including the American eugenics movement and conventional gender roles. Finally, situating the story in the tradition of women’s writing, in which discourses of domesticity relate to politics frequently, it argues the male’s misplaced obligation for the boy allegorises the United States’ encounter with the global world, in which it tries to play a responsible part as a masculine adult.