"A View of the Woods" is a short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 by Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...

. It was completed in the fall of 1956 and was first published in the Fall 1957 issue of Partisan Review

Partisan Review

Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...

. It was later republished in The Best American Short Stories of 1958, and again in 1965, in O'Connor's short story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge

Everything That Rises Must Converge

Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of short stories written by Flannery O'Connor during her final illness. The title of the collection and of the short story of the same name is taken from a passage from the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The collection was published...

. O'Connor had first submitted it to Harper's Bazaar

Harper's Bazaar

Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...

, although she correctly expected that the story was "a little grim" for the Harper's readership and would be rejected. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work; "A View of the Woods" contains numerous references to Judeo-Christian mythology. It explores the ideas of modernism and materialism pitted against salvation .

Plot summary

The main characters of the story are seventy-nine-year-old Grandfather Fortune, a successful landowner, and his favorite granddaughter, Mary Fortune Pitts, who is said to resemble him and he believes that she shares his business acumen. The grandfather is at the very least ambivalent toward his own daughter and dislikes his son-in-law, Pitts, but allows them to reside on a piece of his property. When the grandfather sells parcels of his land for development, he knowingly irritates his son-in-law Pitts on every occasion. The grandfather is in return frustrated every time Pitts chastises Mary Fortune and tells her not to let him beat her. Eventually, Fortune decides to sell a parcel of land where Pitts grazes his calves for a gas station, and, in doing so, would obstruct their view of the woods. Fortune sells the land to a serpent-like man named Tilman, despite Mary Fortune's attempts to dissuade him from doing so. After Mary Fortune continually irritates her grandfather, he attempts to punish her, but she attacks him and says that she is entirely a Pitts, not a Fortune. In response, the grandfather smashes her head against the rocks, killing her, and then presumably suffers a heart attack as he looks out at a bulldozer developing his land.