SOURCE: Prunty, Wyatt. “The Figure of Vacancy.” Shenandoah 46, no. 3 (fall 1996): 38-55.

In the following essay, Prunty investigates the role of vacancy in the stories of Peter Taylor and O'Connor.

In Flannery O'Connor's “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the grandmother is the first to comment upon the blankness of the sky. Later the Misfit says, “Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither.” In Peter Taylor's less familiar but equally masterful “A Wife of Nashville,” Helen Ruth stands silently behind a tea cart and looks into the dark recesses of her living room as she prepares to explain to the men of her family why Jess McGehee had to lie about leaving. The blank sky of the one story and a prolonged silence in the other are only two of many figures for despair, but they provide a good place to begin thinking about the...