Good Country People

Like many of Flannery O’Connor’s stories, “Good Country People” is about the hypocrisy particular to the deep South, particularly concerning the judgment and misapprehension that comes with characters who are sure that their worldview is morally unassailable. Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga each believe that they are correct: Mrs. Hopewell, with her traditional Christian view and her desire to see her daughter become a traditional woman like Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, and Hulga, in her embrace of a nihilistic strain of atheism. Both of them, however, are susceptible to Manley Pointer’s manipulation. His arrival in the story suggests that any ideology is fragile and subject to victimization while demonstrating that Hulga is not that different from her mother despite her efforts and disdain. O’Connor rarely provides easy answers in her stories, choosing instead to let the deconstruction of a character’s defense mechanisms by some outside, malignant force portray the society and values of the South as foolish or insufficient. In some of her stories, this leads to an epiphany that hints at a new concept of goodness rooted in O’Connor’s Christian faith (as in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”), but “Good Country People” leaves Hulga defenseless and abandoned in her disillusionment while letting Mrs. Hopewell cling to her false understanding.

Both, though, are hubristic fools in the eyes of Manley, easy marks for his con, and though the story stops short of making Manley into an antihero, it does see his theft of Hulga’s leg as a kind of karmic justice. Born Joy, Hulga has worked hard to construct an identity for herself that abandons her connection to her family, Christianity, and the South; it’s only her heart condition that has her trapped in her childhood home, where her mother treats her like a child when they aren’t fighting with each other (it’s a notable parallel to O’Connor’s biography, as her lupus left her homebound and fragile despite her literary success). The accident that took her leg left her instead with a symbol of her injury (the wooden leg) and a feeling of being different, which she embraces by cultivating a loud, stomping walk, changing her name to Hulga, and pursuing a philosophy degree that the story suggests was an act of defiance as much as it was a genuine interest in the subject matter. Mrs. Hopewell sees the study of philosophy as purposeless, which for Hulga is part of the point: the story suggests that her embrace of nihilism is a response to her feelings of worthlessness and weakness. Nihilism is attractive to her because it allows her to find value in her own identity without conforming it to societal expectations or focusing on the ways she is not enough; instead of comparing herself to her mother or Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, she views them with disdain from a position of perceived enlightenment.

She takes the same approach to Manley Pointer, seeing him as someone who needs her knowledge and connecting the erotic impulse (which she has little use for) with the possibility of showing him that her worldview is correct (which she finds deeply compelling, both in her fantasy and in reality). Though Manley is a con man and represents the story’s concept of the true nature of the South, the chief difference between him and the other characters is that he does not try to rationalize his selfish behavior with a system of belief. He is the South’s id, victimizing and lying as his whim dictates, giving himself a lurid name, and exploiting the vulnerable without compunction. In this sense, he represents a true nihilism that embraces amorality, and as such, he reveals to Hulga just how fragile her constructed personality and philosophy are, both literally by stealing her artificial leg and figuratively by undermining her “enlightened” position.

Mrs. Hopewell is just as wrong about the world, though she is spared from having the rug pulled out from under her. Her constant reliance on platitudes and belief in the inherent goodness of people—particularly the poor, uneducated people of the South—speaks to an ignorance of her own position as part of the privileged class of landowners with hired help. Her relationship with Mrs. Freeman demonstrates that her Christian ideals are hollow: she sees herself as perfect but openly admits to manipulating Mrs. Freeman. She represents the genteel South that wishes to uphold old power structures of class and servitude and uses Christian tradition to do so while ignoring the ways those same power structures have corrupted the Christian faith. Her refusal to interrogate her own beliefs also leads her into open conflict with Hulga, who she finds almost frightening in her refusal to conform.

The story openly criticizes each character for their beliefs through the deployment of irony and an editorializing narrative voice, and in true Southern Gothic tradition, the South is revealed to be rotten and corrupt underneath a veneer of politeness. But in its rejection of morally-grounded atheism and higher education, the story also suggests that there aren’t easy reckonings to be had. The malignancy of the South has no clear answer. The closing image of the story—Manley walking off with his valise while Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman watch, with Mrs. Freeman suggesting that she’s not as simple as she seems—suggests that as long as people continue to use their beliefs to manipulate, ignore, or misunderstand others, the victimization will continue.