Uncertain
Season in
High Country
by Robert Penn Warren
A
Hundred Wild Geese
by Carol Ann Davis
Fires
by John Lee
Consenting
to Love: Autobiographical Roots
of O’Connor’s “Good
Country People”
by Mark Bosco S. J. |
Consenting
to Love: Autobiographical Roots
of O’Connor’s “Good Country People”
Mark
Bosco S. J.
The
year 2004 marked the fortieth anniversary of Flannery O’Connor’s
death from kidney failure brought on from her years of fighting
the effects of lupus, in midcentury a very debilitating disease
and difficult to survive. The intervening time since her death
has seen an explosion of critical and popular enthusiasm for
her work, so much so that in 1988 she achieved canonical status
in American arts and letters with the publication of her Collected
Works by the Library of America. In the fall of 2003 an international
symposium, the fifth of its kind, was held in O’Connor’s
hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia. It brought together over
two hundred scholars and enthusiasts, including novelists,
poets, and other artists who have acknowledged O’Connor’s
influence on their work.
Readers
have been fascinated by this very private woman’s stories,
as well as by her life. Much of what is known about O’Connor’s
personal life is revealed in Sally Fitzgerald’s award-winning
edition of the writer’s letters to friends and admirers,
The Habit of Being (1979). These letters reveal the intelligence,
wit, and religious sensibility of a writer proud of both her
southern heritage and her Roman Catholic faith. Arranged chronologically,
the letters give a sense of O’Connor’s personal
development as an artist and offer insight into her personality.
What they do not provide, however, is an account of romantic
interest in her life. Many critics have assumed that her physical
condition, compromised after the onset of lupus in her twenties,
precluded her forming—even hoping to form—deep
attachments with men.
“Good
Country People” (1955), one of O’Connor’s
most successful and most anthologized stories, centers on
the maimed Joy Hopewell, fitted with a wooden leg as the result
of a childhood accident. She has officially changed her name
to Hulga to reflect the ugliness she feels about life and
to spite her mother. Hulga, who has a doctorate in philosophy
and displays a disdain for her mother’s southern, Christian
manners, lives as an aloof recluse on the family farm. One
day she has an encounter with a disarming Bible salesman named
Manley Pointer, a rustic Lothario who is attracted to this
lonely intellectual, in part because he senses an unspoken
kinship between her exotic beliefs and his own charlatanism.
Surprised by Hulga’s declaration of her atheism, he
reckons that she is a woman who has thrown off the Bible-belt
conventions of the South. They share a brief kiss on a walk
in the country, a walk that ends in a secluded loft in a barn.
Once there, Manley Pointer continues his amorous maneuvers
and seems chagrined when Hulga resists. He asks her to take
off her artificial leg to prove that she loves him, and she
guardedly agrees. But when Hulga quickly discovers that Manley
professed a naïve Christian faith just to get his way
with her, he malevolently grabs her wooden leg, stuffs it
into his suitcase, and leaves her stranded in the loft. With
a sense of brutal revelation, she watches from the window
the charlatan’s “blue figure struggling successfully
over the green speckled lake.”
How
art mediates life is a question of general interest in postmodern
culture, and “Good Country People” has often made
O’Connor fans wonder whether there is any connection
between the author’s own life and the creation of this
story. Parallels abound between O’Connor’s history
and Hulga’s: O’Connor was incapacitated by lupus,
which forced her to leave the intellectual and cultural reaches
of New York City and return to the South; there she was cared
for by her mother on their family farm. A close reading of
O’Connor’s collected letters reveals in the writer’s
personality a bit of Hulga’s ornery side. O’Connor
comes through as a very complex woman who, with great intelligence,
is aware of her own vices and virtues. Given these connections
between O’Connor and Hulga, it’s reasonable to
wonder if someone in O’Connor’s life served as
the basis for the character of Manley Pointer in “Good
Country People.”
Continued
in volume 41, issue 2, spring 2005 |
