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.