Good Country People
Hulga Hopewell
Everything is Nothing
The realities of experience
outrun all possibilities of
metaphysical speculation.
Three Worlds within the story.
Farm
University
Back Country
The three form a hierarchy of
intellectual sophistication
The Farm
• Constitutes the norm for human conduct and
attitudes.
Hulga and Manley are defined as peculiar
by the standards of normality.
Intellectual
Simple
The farm, on the other hand, affirms the literal
view of reality. It gives primacy to the realm of
fact, to the familiar details of human biology and
social experience. Mrs. Freeman’s talk is limited to
faithful reports of Carramae’s pregnancy or the
talents of Glynese’s boyfriend, an aspiring
chiropractor, who pops her neck to cure a sty.
Religion is relegated to the attic and is seldom
referred to except in properly sanctimonious
attitudes.
Philosophy is limited to a familiar round of
banal observations that serve to explain all
circumstances and account for all needs-’Nothing is perfect...that is life! ... well, other
people have their opinions, too.’ The farm’s
attitudes --its ideas--like its daily routines
and conversations--are fixed and continue in
a comfortable pattern of unbroken
repetition.
When Joy (Hula) because of a weak heart (a significant
symptom) returns to the farm from the great world of
the university to live among the provincials, her scorn is
boundless.
Having failed in her attempted escape, she now displays her contempt by a
studied series of irritations mannerisms and withering comments.
She stomps about the house to remind her mother of her daughter’s
painful deformity; she changes her name from Joy to Hulga apparently
because the latter is the ugliest she can discover; and she repeatedly
undercuts the obtuse Mrs. Freeman
Joy’s academic attainments have left her totally
unsuited for the life of the farm. Joy’s
doctorate, like her name change, signals her
renunciation of her old environment and her
intent to claim a new role.
Mrs Hopewell , however, is perplexed by this new
identity, just as she is puzzled by many aspects of
joy’s behavior; “You could say, ‘My daughter is a
nurse,’ and ‘My daughter is a school teacher,’ or
even, ‘My daughter is a chemical engineer.” “You
could not say , ‘My daughter is a philosopher.’
That was something that has ended with the
Greeks and Romans.’”
Despite Joy’s air of intellectual superiority, Mrs.
Hopewell continues to regard her as a mere child.
And Mrs. Hopewell also enjoys a keen sense of
her own inner worth: ‘Mrs. Hopewell has no
bad qualities of her own but she was able to use
other people’s in such a constructive way that
she never felt the lack.’
As for Mrs. Freeman, she ‘could never be
brought to admit herself wrong on any point.’
The story is among other
things, an excursion into
the follies bred of vanity
and pride.
Manley Pointer, the backwoods bible salesman,
serves to complete the hierarchy of intellect.
He is from far back in the country “not even from a place, just near
a place.”
Far from giving himself airs, he humbly insists upon his innocence
and accuses Mrs. Hopewell of disliking him for it: “I know I’m real
simple. I don’t know how to say a thing but to say say it. I’m just a
country boy...people like you don’t like to fool with people like
me!”
Manley piously asserts that he wisher to devote his life to
“Chrustian service
The game played out between Manley and
Mrs. Hopewell is a foreshadowing of the later
game of seduction between Manley and
Hulga, and in each instance, the deception
extends to both sides.
Mrs. Hopewell, who pretends to approve of Manley rural innocence,
proves her goodwill by asking him to dinner--am invitation she
immediately regrets.
She also lies to him by insisting that her Bible is in her bedroom,
instead of confessing that her atheist daughter forced to banish
the book from sight.
When Hulga sets in motion her cunning plan of seduction, she
assumes that her is preparing a union of total sophistication
(herself) with total innocence (Manley).
She is prepared to deal with Manley’s inevitable guilts after the
consummation of the event;
“She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it
to a deeper understanding of life. She took all his shame away
and turned it into something useful”
In the barn loft, Hulga explains her philosophy: “I’m one of
those people who see through to nothing...WE are all
damned...but some of us have taken off our blindfolds and see
there’s nothing to see. It’s a kind of salvation.”
Hulga plays the intellectual Eve to this
untouched Adam.
However, she soon discovers that the country boy is not so simple as he
appears. The rustic has come prepared for the outing with whisky,
contraceptives, and a pack of pornographic cards which he produces
from his hollow Bible.
Indeed Hulga is rapidly undeceived as to his true character. when she
pleads, ‘Aren’t you ...just good county people?
“I hope you don’t think I believe this 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.”
Manley Pointer seems well named for his role in the
promised union. He is, as well, a connoisseur of the
obscene and adds Hulga’s leg to his growing collection
of bizarre objects.
Hulga’s venture into sexual initiation leads to her spiritual rape.
As Manley pops the leg into his valise, he sneers a final taunt.
“And I’ll tell you another thing Hulga...you ain’t so smart. I
been believing in nothing ever since I was born!”
Hulga is abruptly hurled from the
intellectual heights she has so smugly
inhabited; Manley is exposed as a disguised
villain.
Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman are left
unchanged in their usual state of selfsatisfied ignorance. Mrs. Hopewell, viewing
the salesman fleeing across the meadows,
reflects, ‘He was so simple...but I guess the
world wild be better off if we were all that
simple.’
Here as elsewhere in Flannery O’Connor, what
distinguishes the modern version of a frontier tale is
that her events do not occur in a moral vacuum. Hulga
is judged as pride overthrown, but Manley reminds the
reader that pure evil persists in the world in all its vulgar
attributes. One does not have to have a Ph.D to
become the devil’s disciple. Depravity and its rituals are
easily learned without benefit of seminar or graduate
lecture. And it is to be hoped that Hulga, having
mastered the fundamentals of the fact of evil, is now
prepared for additional instruction in spiritual reality.