Feminism and New Historicism in Flannery O’Connor’s Good Country People

Feminism and Historicism play a major part in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Good Country People”, first published in 1955. The story focuses on the importance of identity and the parallels between truth and deception. In “Good Country People”, the Hopewell family, maintain a small farm in rural Georgia with the help of tenants the Freemans. The pious Mrs. Hopewell’s mottos ‘nothing is perfect’ and ‘it takes all kinds to make the world’ are manifested in her unmarried thirty-two year old daughter, Joy who later changes her name to Hulga, wears a prosthetic wooden leg because of a childhood accident. Hulga who has a Ph.D. in Philosophy, cannot advance her academic aspirations because of a weak heart; because of this she must live in her childhood home with her mother. Regardless of her education, Hulga’s mother believes her daughter is completely nonsensical; Hulga’s true fault is that she is ignorant to her own surrounds. She personally finds the faith of her mother, and Mrs. Freeman, senseless because she see it as not authentic. Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga initially trust the traveling Bible salesman, Manley Pointer, who visits the farm; both believe that he is from “good country people”, but soon learn he is not.

The feminist element is an overarching theme in all of Flannery O’Connor’s works; it is imperative to note however that O’Connor did not want to be easily identified as a feminist, she wanted her characters not to deny their femininity but to “exploit it” sometimes to the point of a parody (Smith 35); she wanted her readers to “give credit” to her characters for “employing a clever strategy in attempting to survive in a man’s world” (Smith 35). With this, O’Connor provokes her readers to not only have compassion for ...

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...s, I believe, taken over; the separation between mother and daughter, the invisible umbilical cord, is still attached. Hulga does want to believe in “good country people”, her roots are strong, but just as easily she was disillusioned and swindled by the promise of new things away from the Hopewell farm.

Works Cited

Desmond, John F. "Flannery O'Connor and the Symbol." Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5.2 (2002): 143-56. Print.

Schaum, Melita. ""Erasing Angel": The Lucifer-Trickster Figure in Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction." The Southern Literary Journal 33.1 (Fall 2000): 1-26. Print.

Smith, Peter A. "Flannery O'Connor's Empowered Women." The Southern Literary Journal 26.2 (Spring, 1994): 35-47. Print.

Westling, Louise. "Flannery O'Connor's Mothers and Daughters." Twentieth Century Literature 24.4 (Winter, 1978): 510-22. Print.