Volu m e I - Purdue University Calumet

April Joy Billmeier
Purdue University Calumet
The Female Grotesque
William Dean Howells, Sherwood Anderson, and Flannery O’Connor have created some of the
most selfish, pathetic, and heart-wrenching female personalities of the twentieth century with Editha
Balcom, Elizabeth Willard, and the Grandmother. Each character has their own macabre principles that
guide their stories to an unexpected ending. In his short story, “The Book of the Grotesque,” Anderson uses
the term “truths” instead of principals to create his own definition of “grotesque.” He says, “It was the truths
that made the people grotesques… the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called
it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a
falsehood” (1203). In other words, it is taking a personal value such as heroism, the ability to protect one’s
young, or a desire for appreciation and trying to mold oneself or others into fitting into that value to an
extreme that can result in the perversion of that very value. In all of these stories, the attempt to do so is
not without a consequence, direct or indirect. It makes no difference whether it’s a young woman engaged
to a war hero, a mother who wants something better for her son, or a grandmother who simply longs for
respect. It is the ramifications that make these characters grotesques.
In his story “Editha,” William Dean Howells brings to the reader the story of Editha Balcom, who is
being courted by George Gearson. Their relationship develops in tandem with the blossoming of a nation
about to go to war. Just as George brings the news that war has been formally declared, Editha instantly
decides that she wants the man that she marries to be a “hero.” She thinks to herself, “if he could do
something worthy to have won her–be a hero, her hero” (531) then she will be satisfied that he is the man
for her. She is determined to guide George into becoming her perfect champion. She gives no
consideration to the terrible atrocities of war, no thought to the pain and suffering that must be endured in
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