Flannery O’Connor's 'Good Country People': Southern Gothic Characters and Themes, Study notes of Voice

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Good Country People

Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor: The Moral Voice of the South

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

- Flannery O’Connor

Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia. An important voice in American literature, she wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters. O'Connor's writing also reflected her own Roman Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics.

1925- Regarding her emphasis of the grotesque, O'Connor said: “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.“[

Literary Context

Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South. It resembles its parent genre in that it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. It is unlike its parent genre in that it uses these tools not solely for the sake of suspense but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South. The Southern Gothic style is one that employs the use of macabre, ironic events to examine the values of the American South.

While English Gothicism closely paralleled the Romantic Movement in literature, frequently focusing on issues of love, sexuality, and the place of reason in human existence, Southern Gothic fiction focuses largely on themes of terror, death, and social interaction.

Certain scholars – such as Leslie Fiedler in Love and Death in the American Novel (1960) – have identified specifically national concerns apparent in Southern Gothic fiction, particularly the relationships between races and genders.

Literary Context (cont.)

Flannery O’Connor occupies a unique place in the Southern Gothic movement. With the exception of a number of her early stories, O'Connor consistently produced fiction having an implicit, if not a totally explicit, religious world view as an integral element of each work.

As a writer with professedly Christian concerns, O'Connor was, throughout her writing career, convinced that the majority of her audience did not share her basic viewpoint and was, if not openly hostile to it, at best indifferent. In order to reach such an audience, O'Connor felt that she had to make the basic distortions of a world separated from the original, divine plan "appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural." This she accomplished by resorting to the grotesque in her fiction.

To the "true believer," the "ultimate grotesqueness" is found in those post-lapsarian (after the Fall) individuals who ignore their proper relationship to God and either rebel against Him or deny that they have any need to rely upon Him for help in this life. Joy/Hulga Hopewell belongs in this second class.

Literary Context (cont.)

At another point, she comments, “From my own experience in trying to

make stories 'work,' I have discovered that what is needed is an action

that is totally unexpected, yet totally believable, and I have found that, for

me, this is always an action which indicates that grace has been offered.

And frequently it is an action in which the devil has been the unwilling

instrument of grace.”

Loosely defined, Illuminating Grace (the type of grace most frequently

used by O'Connor in her stories) may be described as a gift, freely given by

God, which is designed to enlighten the minds of people and help them

toward eternal life. It may take the form of some natural mental

experience, such as a dream or viewing a beautiful sunset, or of some

experience imposed from outside the individual — for example, from

hearing a sermon or from experiencing an intense joy, a sorrow, or some

other shock.

Literary Context (cont.)

Man, having been given free will, may, according to the Catholic position,

elect not to accept the gift of grace, as opposed to a Calvinist position,

which argues for a concept of Irresistible Grace — that is, man cannot

reject God's grace when it is given to him. Even though O'Connor notes

that she looks for the moment “in which the presence of grace can be felt

as it waits to be accepted or rejected,” one should not assume that she is

attempting to pass judgment on the ultimate fate of her characters. That,

from an orthodox point of view, is not possible for man to do.

Even though O'Connor's vision was essentially religious, she chose to

present it from a primarily comic or grotesque perspective.

Good Country People

• Mrs. Freeman – Woman who lives next door to Mrs. Hopewell and works for Mrs. Hopewell as a tenant farmer
• Glynese Freeman – Mrs. Freeman’s daughter, eighteen “with many admirers”
• Carramae Freeman – Mrs. Freeman’s daughter, fifteen but married and pregnant
• Mrs. Hopewell – A divorcée, owner of a farm, and the mother of Joy/Hulga
• Joy/Hulga Hopewell – Mrs. Hopewell’s thirty-two-year- old daughter with a PhD and a wooden leg
• Manley Pointer – A door-to-door Bible salesman

Characters

Good Country People

This story is divided into four rather distinct sections which help emphasize the relationships between the four central characters. By dividing the story into four loosely distinct sections, O'Connor is able to establish subtle parallels between the characters of Mrs. Freeman and Manley Pointer and between Mrs. Hopewell and her daughter, Joy/Hulga, while at the same time providing details which appear to emphasize the different facets of the four individual characters. For example, O'Connor uses the day of Joy’s/Hulga's "enlightenment" in order to create parallels between Mrs. Freeman and Manley Pointer, while the flashbacks to the events of the previous day establish the parallels which exist between Joy/Hulga and her mother.

Style

Good Country People

Within this larger setting are two others: Mrs. Hopewell’s house, especially the kitchen, where the story begins, and the property beyond the gate of the house, where Manley seduces Joy/Hulga. Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman carry on “their most important business in the kitchen at breakfast.” The kitchen, generally thought of as the heart of a home, in this story does not provide such symbolic sustenance because of the insipid talk between the women when they visit there. The fact that Joy/Hulga has “a bad heart” reinforces this emptiness in the Hopewell kitchen. The setting is significant, too, because it is a site of female domesticity, and this is a story about women without men—until, that is, Manley Pointer comes to sell Bibles. His aggressive intrusion into this female space is demonstrated when he falls “forward into her hall” as Mrs. Hopewell allows him into her home. The garden outside the kitchen is also significant, for here the women pull out “evil-smelling onions” when they see Pointer walk off into the distance, as if eradicating his evil in essence from their territory.

Setting (cont.)

Good Country People

Outside the safety of the home, Joy/Hulga makes a rendezvous with Pointer. She meets him at the gate; walks across the pasture; climbs a ladder to the loft; and from there watches him walk away after he kisses her, removes her wooden leg, and ultimately takes it with him when he leaves. All of these details of place carry meaning. The gate symbolizes Joy’s/Hulga’s introduction to the outside world, and the ladder that leads to the loft signifies the arrogance of her sense of intellectual superiority, her presumption that she is Manley’s (and everyone’s) better – an attitude that proves to be her demise as the story continues.

Setting (cont.)

Good Country People

• External - Man vs. Man (Mother vs. Daughter)
  1. Joy’s/Hulga's Ph.D. degree in philosophy creates a major problem between the two women. Mrs. Hopewell thinks that girls should go to school and have a good time — but her daughter has attained the ultimate educational degree, yet education did not "bring her out"; privately, Mrs. Hopewell is glad that there is "no more excuse for [Hulga] to go to school again." Mrs. Hopewell would like to brag about her daughter, as she can brag about Mrs. Freeman's daughters, but bragging about Joy/Hulga is next to impossible. Mrs. Hopewell can't say, "My daughter is a philosopher." That statement, as Mrs. Hopewell knows, is something that "ended with the Greeks and Romans."
  2. Joy’s/Hulga's manner of dress also contributes to the vast misunderstanding that exists between the two women. Mrs. Hopewell thinks that her daughter’s wearing "a six-year-old skirt and a yellow sweat shirt with a faded cowboy on a horse embossed on it" is idiotic, proof that despite the Ph.D. and her name change, she is "still a child."

Conflict

Good Country People

3. In addition to wearing inappropriate clothes, the name change (from "Joy" to "Hulga") cut such a wound into Mrs. Hopewell that she will never entirely heal. To change one's name from "Joy" to "Hulga," according to Mrs. Hopewell, was an act of ridiculously immature rebellion. Mrs. Hopewell is convinced that Joy pondered until she "hit upon the ugliest name in any language" and then legally changed her name.
4. The chasm between the two women is even further deepened by Mrs. Hopewell's attitude toward the Freeman girls — as opposed to her attitude toward Joy/Hulga. Mrs. Hopewell likes to praise Glynese and Carramae. In contrast, Mrs. Hopewell is deeply ashamed of Joy/Hulga.
5. As a result, Joy/Hulga withdraws and decides not to attempt any meaningful relationship with her mother. This is apparent in the scene where O'Connor focuses on Joy’s/Hulga's eyes. Hulga's eyes, she says, are "icy blue, with the look of someone who has achieved blindness by an act of will and means to keep it."

Conflict (cont.)

Good Country People

• Dramatic irony
  1. Although Joy/Hulga is educated and highly intelligent, she has no common sense, which leads to her trying to sedeuce Manley.
  2. Manley comes prepared for this event and ends up stealing her prosthetic leg.
• “Good country” philosophy – "It takes all kinds to make the world," and "Everybody is different." 1. Mrs. Hopewell cannot reconcile herself to a daughter who is “different.” 2. Mrs. Hopewell considers Hulga's acts of rebellion to be little more than pranks of an immature mind.

Irony (cont.)

Good Country People

• Innocence vs. experience Joy/Hulga does not understand herself as innocent; indeed, she considers herself to be quite experienced because her education has given her access to philosophers such as Nietzsche, whose words she underlines with a blue pencil: “science wishes to know nothing of nothing.” Significantly, Manley Pointer wears a blue suit and lines his suitcase of Bibles with blue, thus linking her nihilism to his evil masquerading as innocence. In denying God and asserting the primacy of Nothing, Joy/Hulga lacks the ability to recognize Manley for who he is because, “in her economy,” evil has no more meaning than God has. This “innocent” view allows Manley to spiritually rape her, symbolized by him taking her wooden leg. When she pleads, “Aren’t you just good country people?” he replies, “I hope you don’t think that I believe in that crap! I may sell Bibles but I know which end is up and I wasn’t born yesterday and I know where I’m going!” This last word is deeply ironic, for without a leg—and without a soul – Joy/Hulga can go nowhere. If at the beginning she considers herself an intellectual Eve about to seduce an innocent Adam, by the end of the story Adam reveals himself as evil incarnate – Satan himself, perhaps. Through him she falls into the world of experience, gaining the knowledge that evil does indeed exist, that there is meaning beyond the Nothing she embraced at the beginning of the story.

Themes & Symbolism