Good Country People

“When Mrs. Hopewell said to Mrs. Freeman that life was like that, Mrs. Freeman would say, ‘I always said so myself.’ Nothing had been arrived at by anyone that had not first been arrived at by her.”

Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Hopewell share the belief that the world functions according to their understanding, so it’s ironic that Mrs. Hopewell finds Mrs. Freeman so annoying. The narrator’s frequent editorializing on the characters in the story helps ground the reader in the story’s point of view that all of these people are fools in their own way.

“When Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad blank hull of a battleship. She would not use it. She continued to call her Joy to which the girl responded but in a purely mechanical way.”

This quote sets up Hulga’s chosen identity (as exemplified by her choice of name) and her relationship with her mother, which is defined by their inability to empathize with one another. Hulga wants to be imposing, serious, and ugly, and her mother longs for her to be happy; this disconnect is at the core of their relationship.

“She considered the name her personal affair. She had arrived at it first purely on the basis of its ugly sound and then the full genius of its fitness had struck her. She had a vision of the name working like the ugly sweating Vulcan who stayed in the furnace and to whom, presumably, the goddess had to come when called. She saw it as the name of her highest creative act. One of her major triumphs was 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.”

Hulga’s chosen name is deeply important to her, and she sees it as an act of defiance against her upbringing and her current life. She thinks of herself as self-made—her identity was actively and purposefully constructed—and she sees herself as a serious, important person who has been sequestered in darkness.

“It seemed to Mrs. Hopewell that every year she grew less like other people and more like herself—bloated, rude, and squint-eyed. And she said such strange things! To her own mother she had said—without warning, without excuse, standing up in the middle of a meal with her face purple and her mouth half full—‘Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!’ she had cried sinking down again and staring at her plate, ‘Malebranche was right: we are not our own light. We are not our own light!’”

This passage illustrates the disconnect between Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga and their mutual disappointment and confusion. Mrs. Hopewell finds Hulga’s criticism of her incomprehensible, and she thinks that Hulga is becoming someone ugly out of spite. Hulga, meanwhile, lives with the belief that her nihilistic atheism is a more enlightened approach to the world that goes unappreciated in her home.

“‘Why!’ she cried, ‘good country people are the salt of the earth! Besides, we all have different ways of doing, it takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round. That’s life!’” 

The title of the story is an ironic misapprehension, and its frequent use by Mrs. Hopewell illustrates her assumptions about people from the country as inherently pure or virtuous—an assumption that Hulga shares, deep down, despite her outward disdain for them. Mrs. Hopewell also relies heavily on empty platitudes, which are on full display here.

“During the night she had 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. True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind. She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper understanding of life. She took all his shame away and turned it into something useful.”

Hulga assumes her superiority over Manley Pointer and believes that she will provide him with some kind of enlightenment. In her imagination, he is a recipient of her pity and too stupid to see that his remorse comes from a false belief in religion. For Hulga, the erotic impulse is tied directly to her superior knowledge.

“Even before he released her, her mind, clear and detached and ironic anyway, was regarding him from a great distance, with amusement but with pity. She had never been kissed before and she was pleased to discover that it was an unexceptional experience and all a matter of the mind’s control. Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka.”

Hulga and Manley’s kiss—Hulga’s first—is a disappointment that confirms her worldview: the trappings of romance and traditional roles of women are of no use to her, and Pointer is a figure of pity like she imagined when she fantasized about this moment the night before.

“The girl smiled. It was the first time she had smiled at him at all. ‘In my economy,’ she said, ‘I’m saved and you are damned but I told you I didn’t believe in God.’”

Hulga’s “economy” is purely intellectual, and she asserts here that her intellect is what gives her the upper hand in life. She again falls back on her atheism as a symbol of her enlightenment and salvation, not knowing that Pointer himself is a nonbeliever.

“‘You got to say it,’ he repeated. ‘You got to say you love me.’

She was always careful how she committed herself. ‘In a sense,’ she began, ‘if you use the word loosely, you might say that. But it’s not a word I use. I don’t have illusions. I’m one of those people who see through to nothing.’” 

Love is not a word Hulga uses because she does not believe in the value of human connection. In this moment, her fantasy where she turns pity for Pointer into enlightenment is revealed to be a lot more fraught than she imagined, as she has to contend with his need for affection (which is a ruse). Her nihilism makes her unable to connect with Pointer on an emotional level, and it also keeps her from perceiving him as a threat.

“But she was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail. No one ever touched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away. ‘No,’ she said.”

This moment is the first time Hulga shows outward vulnerability and confirms what the story has been hinting at: much of her behavior can be seen as a defensive gesture to hide her real feelings of vulnerability. Pointer, of course, sees through this all along, but the reader is asked to see this new facet of her for the first time, and the leg takes on an almost religious significance in its description.

“She decided that for the first time in her life she was face to face with real innocence. This boy, with an instinct that came from beyond wisdom, had touched the truth about her.”

Hulga’s reading of Pointer in this scene is all wrong—he is actually manipulating her, and he has worked to put her in the most vulnerable position she could be in. For Hulga, though, this is a moment of epiphany that still confirms her own worldview and superiority, and it speaks to the hubris she is bringing even to moments of intimacy, making Pointer’s immediate pivot that much more devastating for her. 

“Her voice when she spoke had an almost pleading sound. ‘Aren’t you,’ she murmured, ‘aren’t you just good country people?’

The boy cocked his head. He looked as if he were just beginning to understand that she might be trying to insult him. ‘Yeah,’ he said, curling his lip slightly, ‘but it ain’t held me back none. I’m as good as you any day in the week.’”

His con revealed, Manley Pointer reveals a cruel streak that comes from his knowledge that his victims are conflating the idea of being good with being stupid, simple, or not worthy of consideration. Their underestimation of him serves as his tool for getting what he wants and his justification for doing so.

“‘And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga,’ he said, using the name as if he didn’t think much of it, ‘you ain’t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!’”

This is the ultimate indignity for Hulga: Pointer treats her nihilistic atheism as the casual reality of his life and mocks her for thinking that it made her special or significant in any way. The tables have fully turned, and she is being dismissed in the same way that she’s been dismissing people like Pointer.