Good+Country+People

toc Good Country People

By Flannery O'Connor

=Brief Summary:= Mrs. Hopewell is a well-to-do southern lady who hires a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, as a farmhand and housekeeper. Mrs. Freeman is extremely nosy, so Mrs. Hopewell puts her in charge of everything right away, to keep her from causing trouble. Mrs. Hopewell also has a 32 year-old daughter, Joy, who lost one leg in a hunting accident as a child. This disability has made Joy, who still lives with her mother and has never married, overweight, insecure, and foul-tempered; she even has her name legally changed to Hulga purely because of how ugly the name sounds. Joy is incredibly intelligent, and has a Ph. D. in philosophy, which her mother does not feel was a proper use of her education. One morning, a young man named Manley Pointer comes by the home trying to sell bibles, and is extremely charismatic. He manages to win over Mrs. Hopewell with his personality, and she invites him to stay for dinner. At dinner, the man seems to take an interest in Joy, who views him with contempt. Mrs. Hopewell sees them talking at the gate in front of the house after dinner, and after two days of Manley stopping by and trying to charm Joy, they agree to go for a walk together. As they walk, Manley asks Joy about her leg, and kisses her. Joy is not very interested at first, but they continue walking and arrive at a barn and climb up to the loft, where they continue to kiss. Manley even says that he loves her, and convinces her to agree that she loves him too. Eventually, Joy allows Manley to remove her wooden leg, something she feels is a very intimate part of her. Joy, becoming insecure about having to rely on Manley, asks for her leg back, and Manley refuses. He suddenly reveals his true character by showing that his case of bibles actually contains a hollow one with a flask in it, and telling Joy he doesn't believe in God. Manley tells Joy he purposely cons things from people. He steals Joy's wooden leg, leaving her in the loft of the barn, helpless.

=Author Biography:= One aspect of Psychological Criticism is psychobiography. This type of analysis was used early on as psychoanalysis became more important and popular. Psychobiography aims to analyze the life of the author and get at their personality and life experience. In //Literary Criticism,// Bressler writes "such a devised theory... could illuminate an author's individual works, giving rise to the latent content in the author's text". Since background needs to be provided for this project, let's do as the psychoanalysts would do and reach into the life of Flannery O' Connor! Well, as much as we can without being complete professionals. Below is a link to a Prezi for the biography of Flannery O' Connor, but one that also includes interviews and insights into the text the way psychobiography would approach her life.

[|Flannery O' Connor Psychobiography]
=Applying the Theories:=

Frye’s Monomyth
In Good Country People, the story starts in the romance/summer phase. Joy is never a particularly happy person, but she begins to warm up to Manley, eventually trusting him and feeling excited to walk to the barn with him. Deep down, she has always wanted someone to show her affections to and Manley is the first man to take an interest in her, thus fulfilling her wishes. The story then becomes part of the tragedy/fall phase when Manley reveals his true nature and steals Joy's wooden leg, leaving her alone and helpless in the loft of the barn. She quickly goes from feelings of happiness and romance to disaster.

Lacanian Perspective
Joy changing her name to Hulga reflects the fact that she is fragmented. She does not want to keep the name given to her by her mother while living in the imaginary order. She does not feel as if Joy describes her, believing that the hideous name Hulga is much more fitting

Hulga does not have a father figure, the person who represents cultural power in Lacan's symbolic order. Because Hulga is missing this crucial figure, she is manly, unhelpful around the house, and disrespectful to her mother. This is the role she wishes Manley will be able to play in her life. When he convinces her to take off her wooden leg, she begins daydreaming about a day when he will help her take care of it. They continue kissing, and without her leg she feels entirely dependent on Manley.This is an illustration of jouissance, a brief moment when she felt whole, being one with Manley and having him accept her despite anything she is lacking. Her lack of a leg could be considered objet petit a. It is clear that her leg is a separate entity from herself that’s missing, but it has also become a part of her personality that she feels is lacking, thus giving her great insecurity. It is something she yearns for and will continue to yearn for throughout her entire lifetime.

Freudian Perspective
Using Freud’s tripartite model, we can see that Joy has many insecurities that are buried deep within her id. She allows her id to rule much of her personality, dominated by deep-rooted fears and dark desires for pleasure. She immediately wants to seduce Manley, allowing her pleasure principle to take over. The story states, “During the night she imagined that she seduced him. She imagined that the two of them walked on the place until they came to the storage barn beyond the two back fields and there, she imagined, that things came to such a pass that she very easily seduced him and that then, of course, she had to reckon with his remorse,”. All Joy is thinking about here is her immediate pleasure. In her plans to seduce him, her ego and superego do not come into play. She wants to fulfill her immediate psychosexual desires, not realizing that he might not be the honest person he claims to be.

Jungian Perspective
Hulga (or Joy) exhibits animus characteristics in "Good Country People". Also, Hulga's fake leg symbolizes her personal unconscious, but her emotions and actions appeal to the reader's collective unconscious.

Hulga has several degrees and also has a Ph.D in philosophy. For the time period of the story, a Ph.D for a woman would have been rare. The story even says "Mrs. Hopewell thought it was nice for girls to go to school to have a good time but Joy had "gone through." . In Jung's theory, Jung calls this masculine characteristic in a female character "animus" . Reader's are able to detect this characteristic and see them as a type of archetype.

Also, according to a Jung theory, Hulga's fake leg can be seen as a symbol of her personal unconsciousness. Hulga is most vulnerable discussing and showing her fake leg, and by doing so, Pointer "touched the truth about her" When she finally opens up and no longer is hiding the most private part of her life, she begins to dream of the boy taking care of her every morning and night. This emotion and reaction to sharing her unconscious taps into the reader's collective unconscious, as they recognize the archetype and myth of characters giving their whole life to be duped in the end.

=References=