Smith 1

K. Larkin Smith
Rasberry II
ENGL 354-01
6 May 2008

Internalized Sexism and Dysfunction

in Flannery O’Connor’s Mothers and Daughters

Whether intentional or not, central or merely complementary, the complexity of

Flannery O’Connor’s mother and daughter characters and their relationships is not to be

ignored. This pairing appears in many of her short stories both as a framework for the

rest of the plot and as the example from which she leads the reader to other conclusions,

frequently spiritual. Much theory exists about the interactions between mothers and

daughters, attempting to explain female sexuality, gender, socialization, purpose, and how

each of these is complicated by the presence and influence of other women and men. As

Lisa Babinec states, these theories attempt to “determine the cyclical patterns that evolve

from attempts at domination and manipulation and to ascertain why mothers and

daughters fail to interact successfully” (Babinec 2). When asked about the presence of

these themes in her work, O’Connor responded, “On the subject of the feminist business,

I just never think, that is never think of qualities which are specifically feminine or

masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome

without regard to sex” (Babinec 1). We must take O’Connor for her word, but this does

not mean a feminist analysis of her work is not useful, nor does it mean she is not battling

sexism and trying to redefine femininity in her own terms. Louise Westling suggests that

“if Flannery O’Connor had lived long enough for the feminist movement to arouse her

awareness of society’s injustices to women and of her own repressed rage, surely she
 Smith 2

would have confronted these problems consciously in her stories as she did those of race”

(Westling 522). Focusing on Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your

Own” and “Good Country People,” I will explore other critiques to argue that

internalized sexism and the oppressive constraints of 19th and early 20th-century

femininity are the bane of these women’s existence.

Lisa Babinec asserts that mother-daughter bonding “becomes a celebration of

female relationships as mutual nurturance that leaves only a secondary role for men”

(Babinec 3). In most of O’Connor’s short stories, and specifically “The Life You Save

May Be Your Own” and “Good Country People,” the families have been truncated, left

with just the mother to maintain the household and care for the children (child, in this

case). The “secondary role” for men, described by Babinec, is emphasized by the fact

that Mrs. Crater and Mrs. Hopewell are a widow and a divorcee, and there are no other

male siblings or relatives living in their homes. We might argue that because these

women are successfully managing farms, a job typically assigned to the men of the

house, they are participating in the subversion of gender roles, even if by default.

Babinec contends, “Although O’Connor’s women tend to fall into a nineteenth-century

category of dependence on a man, that these women are actually surviving on their own

suggests an underlying struggle for feminine liberation and recognition” (Babinec 3).

Other critics argue further that it is this precise turn of the gender roles that is at

the heart of the conflict between mother and daughter. According to Suzanne Paulson,

“Assertive widows assume their dead husband’s power and take on stereotypically male

characteristics” (Paulson 7). Westling tells us that “although O’Connor seems to view

farming as an unnatural role for a woman, it serves an active and productive function in
 Smith 3

society” (Westling 517-518). But how does this status affect the daughters? Though in a

position of power in managing an estate, Adrienne Rich believes that “women have

neither wealth nor power to hand onto their daughters” (Babinec 2). However, it would

seem that acquiring the farm is precisely the wealth and power that Rich negates. She

continues, “the most mothers can do is teach a daughter the tricks of surviving in a

patriarchy by ‘pleasing, and attaching themselves to powerful and economically viable

men” (Babinec 2). For O’Connor’s daughters, there seems to be no useful function and

no hope in a mother who takes on the father’s role. Even with the power and status of

owning property, the role of men is pervasive and outweighs that of the woman trying to

wear the proverbial pants in the relationship. This pressure and responsibility leaves the

women in O’Connor’s stories to “raise truculent, unruly sons and daughters. The side

effects of their struggle are a degree of stinginess and smugness, wariness of strangers,

and determination to see things in a cheerful light” (Westling 511).

Before we discuss further the effects of widowing and divorce on mothers, we

must consider the daughters in our stories. Westling states, “O’Connor’s daughters are

powerless and passive” (Westling 514). Helen Garson notices that “the children are

people who are grown up only chronologically, who remain adolescents, totally

dependent, hostile, and filled with a sense of self-importance and superiority” (Garson 1).

Lucynell Crater is most certainly a daughter who depends on her mother for her

existence, and beyond that, her safety and daily care as she is totally deaf and mentally

retarded. At 32, she has the innocence and dependence on her mother to pass for an

adolescent. Joy-Hulga is one determined to escape her mother’s influence and control;

she has reached the highest level of education and does a fine job of putting on an
 Smith 4

independent façade. Garson suggests that although she has been out in “the real world,”

is highly educated, and has a strong defiant streak, “she is dependent, does not work on

the farm, behaves badly with guests, is sullen and rude, and childishly calls attention to

herself constantly by needlessly dragging the wooden leg across the floor” (Garson 3).

Her intelligence is actually as crippling to her as her wounded leg. Westling, like Garson,

sees that “O’Connor’s widowed mothers care for their children, but neither sons nor

daughters mature successfully...They are socially crippled, being not only physically

unappealing but also too intelligent, well educated, and sourly independent to ever

assume “normal” roles as wives and mothers” (Westling 512). Westling’s summary leads

us nicely to the “normal” roles and expectations for the women in the stories.

We have already noted that the mother is usually alone in their responsibilities,

but very hardworking as she tries to support her usually “large, physically marred girl by

running a small farm” (Westling 510). The daughter, like Joy-Hulga, is “almost always

bookish and very disagreeable” (511). Also worthy of mention is the fact that the mother

is usually devoted to her daughter, but in Mrs. Hopewell’s case we see that she has “an

attitude of exasperated bafflement at [Joy-Hulga’s] perversity and oddness” (511). She

wants terribly for Joy-Hulga to just be more like Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, the symbols

of true femininity and womanly success. Mrs. Hopewell knows what a “lady” is, and she

thinks that if Joy-Hulga would sit up straight, change her attitude, wear a smile instead of

a frown on her face, “she wouldn’t be so bad looking” (O’Connor 173). As Westling

characterizes the situation, “she is contrasted to Glynese and Carramae Freeman… they

are caricatures of normal girls who court young men, marry, and produce children”

(Westling 518).
 Smith 5

Where I disagree with Westling’s comparison as well as Mrs. Hopewell’s is that

Joy-Hulga is fifteen years their senior, and in a completely different category of

“woman”. She has an education, she went away from home as soon as she could, she

changed her name, she has been without a leg for twenty-some years, and is too

determined to be different from her mother to even consider the life the Freeman

daughters are living. Of Joy-Hulga O’Connor writes, “Sometimes she went for walks but

she didn’t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men. She looked

at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity” (O’Connor 175). She seems

different, if not above the day-to-day concerns of the other women represented in the

story. In Westling’s discussion of O’Connor’s fiction, she says O’Connor “explored the

plight of girls too intelligent and defiant to accept traditional submissive roles” (Westling

520). Joy-Hulga is far to intelligent and defiant to participate in this world of women.

The traditional submissive roles that Westling writes about are perpetuated and

encouraged by the mothers in O’Connor’s stories. We have already noted that these

women are perhaps challenging those expectations by taking over the responsibilities of

the farm, but the words from their mouths and the pressure put on their daughters say

otherwise. As Babinec theorizes, “O’Connor’s work lies in a mother’s desire to rear her

child according to the standards of her social group, not those of her daughter” (Babinec

3). She continues, “Mothers repress or do not recognize the daughters’ individuality, and

the results are immature, disagreeable, homebound children who continue to depend on

overbearing and intimidating mothers for a livelihood, never becoming self-sufficient”

(Babinec 3). Joy-Hulga does her best to resist these expectations, but as we see in her

vulnerability with Manley Pointer, her mother’s influence is not escaped. She has
 Smith 6

internalized the need to depend on a man, as asexual and self-sufficient as she believes

she is, and is easily seduced and taken advantage of.

Discussion of the women in the story cannot be entirely separate of the influence

of men. In both “Good Country People” and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” a

competent and skeptical woman (Joy-Hulga in G.C.P. and Mrs. Crater in The Life) is

tricked by a charming stranger. Westling supposes these men have success and are

welcomed into the home because they are potential mates for the daughters (Westling

516). She writes, “the daughter is always excited by his arrival. The man’s seduction of

these women is not usually sexual in a conventional sense; instead he plays on their

vanity to trick them out of their possessions…In these stories male courtliness is always

the prelude to deceit” (Westling 516). Babinec, and others, credit this vulnerability to the

absence of a father figure in the daughters’ lives, which leads to the daughter’s inability

to interact with men. I would argue further that because Joy-Hulga is constantly

reminded of what she “should” be in the examples of Glynese and Carramae, she is urged

to become the stereotypically female sexual object for men. She believes in her strength

and will, thinking she will seduce Manly Pointer, but is all-too-easily taken advantage of

because she has an unrealistic and tainted understanding of her own sexuality. Westling

reminds us that “Joy-Hulga’s sexuality is essential to her identity, though she is

completely unaware of it. In trying to ignore her womanhood and be a free, asexual

intellect, Joy-Hulga fails to realize the power of sexual differences and of her needs as a

woman” (Westling 519).

Lucynell Crater is absolutely the victim of her mother’s similarly unrealistic and

tainted understanding of the female’s place in society. Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Crater
 Smith 7

are essentially living through their daughters, wanting nothing more than for them to

marry and conform to the social worlds in which they (the mothers) are living and

participating. As Suzanne Paulson asserts, “Mrs. Crater appears in a story that does not

focus primarily on parent/child relationships as much as on the problem of evil in the

world represented by Mr. Shiftlet. Moreover, in some primitive way, Mrs. Crater is also a

nurturing mother: she wants her retarded daughter to secure a husband” (Paulson 7). One

of the most pitiful, but telling moments in the story is when Mrs. Crater practically begs

Mr. Shiftlet to marry her daughter. Her biggest selling point is Lucynell’s innocence and

inability to fend for herself, or, as she puts it, she “can’t sass you back or use foul

language” (O’Connor 56). Paulson supposes that the “masculine forces in modern life

encourage women to conform to roles demanding that they project an image of purity,

passivity, obedience, and dependence—a role that limits how women contribute to

culture and society” (Paulson 1).

These theorists’ positions as well as my own reading of these texts lead us to one

conclusion: the mother-daughter relationships provide telling examples of the pressure of

social conformity and the oppressive roles available to women. The mothers are doing

their daughters a disservice by constantly comparing them to other women, and having no

higher expectations than for their daughters to be beautiful and pleasant by society’s

standards, passive and submissive for potential husbands, and even mirror-images of

themselves. Mrs. Crater and her daughter share the same name, and O’Connor does a

fine job of exemplifying the parrot-like nature of their relationship; When Mrs. Crater

stands up, Lucynell stands up, when Mrs. Crater takes notice of Mr. Shiftlet, Lucynell

takes notice. Joy changes her name to Hulga as soon as she legally can, because her
 Smith 8

greatest triumph is that “her mother had not been able to turn her dust into Joy, but the

greater one was that she had been able to turn it herself into Hulga” (O’Connor 172).

This defiance on Joy-Hulga’s part is troubling for her mother, so much that she is

embarrassed and ashamed of her daughter. Of this theme, Babinec writes, “when

daughters do not measure up to the standards defined by the ‘social group,’ a sense of

maternal failure and incompetence develops and leads to anguish and a sense of

helplessness and guilt, feelings that promote volatile mother-daughter relations” (Babinec

4-5). Mrs. Crater knows better than to let Mr. Shiftlet take Lucynell away with him for a

honeymoon, but her desire to see her expectations fulfilled get the best of her. She is

skeptical, but desperate and so influenced by patriarchy that she ignores her instincts to

keep Lucynell at home, to make any son-in-law live with her right there under nose, and

she and her daughter both suffer for it. Joy-Hulga suffers a similar fate, tricked into

giving up her pride and security with the wooden leg. These stories leave us wishing the

women could truly live by Joy-Hulga’s mantra: “If you want me, here I am—LIKE I

AM” (O’Connor 171).

Word Count: 2,354

 Smith 9

Works Cited

Babinec, Lisa S. "Cyclical Patterns of Domination and Manipulation in Flannery

O'Connor's Mother-Daughter Relationships." Flannery O'Connor Bulletin 19

(1990): 9-29.

Garson, Helen S. "Cold Comfort: Parents and Children in the Work of Flannery

O'Connor." Realist of Distances: Flannery O'Connor Revisited, edited by Karl-

Heinz Westarps and Jan Nordby Gretlund, pp. 113-22. Denmark: Aarhus

University Press, 1987.

O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard To Find. New York: Harcourt Brace &

Company, 1983.

Paulson, Suzanne Morrow. "Male/Female Conflicts." Flannery O'Connor: A Study of the

Short Fiction, pp. 28-45. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1988.

Westling, Louise. “Flannery O’Connor’s Mothers and Daughters.” Twentieth Century

Literature 24(1978): 510-522.