This thesis is an investigation into the nature of the characterizations of women and Negroes in the fiction of Flannery O'Connor and the extent to which the attitudes, beliefs, and ideas contained in the background of the author influenced such portrayals. The thesis identifies these influences as her native South and the Roman Catholic Church and concludes that her misogynistic treatment of women and sympathetic handling of Negroes proceeds from values placed on both groups in such influences.