Editing Flannery O'Connor (section)

==Personal life==
===Catholicism===
O'Connor was a devout Catholic.{{sfn|O'Connor|2008|p=3}} A prayer journal O'Connor had kept during her time at the University of Iowa was published in 2013.{{r|Robinson (2013)}} It included prayers and ruminations on faith, writing, and O'Connor's relationship with God.{{r|Cep (2013)|Robinson (2013)|New Yorker (2013)}} O'Connor was an avid reader of [[Christian existentialism|Christian existentialist]] philosophers such as [[Gabriel Marcel]], considering herself "a Catholic peculiarly possessed of the modern consciousness", and thinking that the South was "Christ-haunted".<ref name="Elie#" />

===Interest in birds===
O'Connor frequently used bird imagery within her fiction.

O'Connor kept [[Chicken|chickens]] and [[Domestic canary|canaries]] at her childhood home in Savannah.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Wiering |first=Maria |title=Flannery O'Connor's 100th birthday parties celebrate author's quirks, talents — and love of birds |url=https://www.ncronline.org/culture/flannery-oconnors-100th-birthday-parties-celebrate-authors-quirks-talents-and-love-birds |access-date=2025-03-29 |website=National Catholic Reporter |language=en}}</ref> When she was six, O'Connor experienced her first brush with celebrity status. [[Pathé News]] filmed "Little Mary O'Connor" with O'Connor and her trained [[chicken]]<ref>{{cite AV media |people=O'Connor, Flannery |date=1932 |title=Do You Reverse? |medium=Motion picture |publisher=Pathé |url=http://www.britishpathe.com/video/do-you-reverse-1/}}</ref> and showed the film around the country. She said: "When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathé News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been an anticlimax."{{sfn|O'Connor|Magee|1987|p=38}} According to writer and critic Catherine Taylor, the "determined chicken, walking backwards to go forward, is a tempting metaphor for O'Connor's own endurance. It instilled in her a 'love affair' with birds that seemed to transcend most human interactions".<ref>{{Cite news |title=Flannery O'Connor at 100: should we still read her? |last=Taylor |first=Catherine |work=The Guardian |url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/25/so-much-more-than-southern-gothic-flannery-oconnor-at-100 |date=25 March 2025 |access-date=28 March 2025}}</ref>

In high school, when the girls were required to sew Sunday dresses for themselves, O'Connor sewed a full outfit of underwear and clothes to fit her pet duck and brought the duck to school to model it.<ref>{{cite book|author=Basselin, Timothy J. |date=2013 |title=Flannery O'Connor: Writing a Theology of Disabled Humanity|publisher=baylorpress.com |page=9}}</ref>

As an adult at Andalusia, she raised and nurtured some 100 [[peafowl]]. Fascinated by birds of all kinds, she raised ducks, ostriches, emus, toucans, and any sort of exotic bird she could obtain, while incorporating peacock imagery in her writing. She described her peacocks in an essay titled "The King of the Birds". O'Connor often used peacocks as symbolism in her writing. The birds are thought to represent divine beauty and mystery, connecting to her spirituality and belief in living reminders of the unexpected, mysterious ways grace appears in the world.
===Illness and death===
[[File:Andalusia (farmhouse); Milledgeville, Georgia; January 29, 2011.jpg|thumb|left|Andalusia Farm, where O'Connor lived from 1952 until her 1964 death]]

By the summer of 1952, O'Connor was diagnosed with [[systemic lupus erythematosus]] (lupus),{{sfn|O'Connor |1979 |p=40 |ps=&nbsp;(letter to Sally Fitzgerald, undated, summer 1952)}} as her father had been before her.{{sfn|Giannone|2012|p=23}} She remained at [[Andalusia (Milledgeville, Georgia)|Andalusia]] for the rest of her life.{{r|Gordon}} O'Connor lived for twelve years after her diagnosis, which was seven years longer than expected.{{cn|date=March 2025}} Her daily routine was to attend Mass, write in the morning, then, spend the rest of the day recuperating and reading. Despite the debilitating effects of the steroid drugs used to treat O'Connor's lupus, she nonetheless made over sixty appearances at lectures to read her works.{{r|Gordon}} In the PBS documentary ''[[Flannery (film)|Flannery]]'', the writer [[Alice McDermott]] explains the impact lupus had on O'Connor's work, saying, "It was the illness, I think, which made her the writer she is".<ref>{{Citation|title=American Masters {{!}} Flannery {{!}} Season 35|url=https://www.pbs.org/video/flannery-mxhspu/|language=en|access-date=2021-06-16}}</ref> 

O'Connor completed more than two dozen short stories and two novels while living with lupus. "The wolf, I'm afraid, is inside tearing up the place", she wrote to her friend Sister [[Mariella Gable]] just few weeks before her death.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Happy Hundredth Birthday, Flannery O'Connor! |url= https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/03/25/happy-hundredth-birthday-flannery-oconnor/ |last=Quatro |first=Jamie |author-link=Jamie Quatro |website=[[The Paris Review]] |access-date=28 March 2025 |date=25 March 2025}}</ref> She died on August 3, 1964 at the age of 39 in Baldwin County Hospital.{{r|Gordon}} Her death was caused by complications from a new attack of lupus, following surgery for a [[uterine fibroid]].{{r|Gordon}} She is buried in Milledgeville, Georgia,{{sfn|Fitzgerald|1965|p=viii}} at [[Memory Hill Cemetery]].