Flannery O'Connor's prepubescents: Two on a pedestal

Flannery O'Connor wrote two stories about antisocial twelve-year-old girls, who live in fractured households where they have little contact with males. In "Temple of the Holy Ghost," the unnamed child is comfortable in her perceived intellectual superiority and allows her imagination to keep her on a cerebral pedestal. The angry Sally Virginia in "A Circle in the Fire" takes refuge in a second-floor window, but later descends for a physical confrontation with three boys threatening the secure world run by her tyrannical mother. Both girls gain spiritual knowledge: the "Temple" child comes to recognize the sanctity of the female body, while Sally Virginia discovers the familial misery inherent in all people. But Sally Virginia includes both males and females in her understanding of human suffering, while the "Temple" child remains spiritually flawed because of a smugness that equates only females with purity.