During Flannery O’Connor’s childhood, the future author had a creative way of weeding out any unsatisfactory playmates who had been chosen by her mother as respectable society. O’Connor would read Grimms’ Fairy Tales aloud to her guests. Some were too frightened by the stories to ever return to the O’Connor house in Savannah (which suited their hostess just fine). Any girl who loved the fairy tales passed young O’Connor’s test. A kindred spirit had been found.
Classic fairy tales aren’t for the faint of heart. It’s not hard to see their influence on O’Connor’s disturbing and shocking southern gothic fiction that includes such horrors as serial killers waiting by the side of rural roads, ready to murder selfish grandmothers. The stories compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm include their fair share of violence and twisted crimes: men who chop young women up into pieces, a father who lusts after his own daughter, and many, many characters who make deals with the devil himself. Today children are often only familiar with sanitized versions of the Grimm Brothers’ stories.