Character Analysis
Hulga, born Joy, is our leading lady in this short story. She changed her name herself at the age of twenty-one and—no offense to her mom who named her—we think it was a move in the right direction. Hulga is many things, but joyful is decidedly not one of them. But then again, she has plenty of reason to be the grump that she is.
Between Worlds
Hulga is thirty-two year old and has a doctoral degree in philosophy. She's been doing heavy duty reading and writing for at least the past ten years, and probably plenty before that in high school. In other words, the lady's learned a great deal—perhaps even too much. Her mother, Mrs. Hopewell, thinks Hulga doesn't have "a grain of sense" (18). Book learning doesn't always translate into practical real world skills, and Hulga feels isolated from the people who surround her, including her mother. So much gray matter, so few interpersonal skills.
We are told that Hulga—here called Joy by her mother—is still living at home because of her health, but desperately wants to be elsewhere, teaching:
The doctors had told Mrs. Hopewell that with the best of care, Joy might see forty-five. She has a weak heart. Joy had made it plain that if it had not been for this condition, she would be far from these red hills and good country people. (17)
Joy has what she needs to make the life she wants for herself—she's educated as all get-out—and yet she can't pursue this life because of her health. Instead she's stuck at home, with only her mother and Mrs. Freeman for company, both of whom, Hulga makes it pretty clear, she doesn't exactly think of as intellectual giants. With her doctoral degree in philosophy, Hulga spends all her time with two people whose major conversational currency is platitudes. No wonder she's grumpy.
Vulnerable
Hulga's heart isn't her only physical problem, though: Her leg was "shot off in a hunting accident when [she] was ten" (13). Though we never learn who shot her or why, we are told that "the leg had been literally blasted off," and Hulga "had never lost consciousness" (16). Yikes, right? So not only does she have a weak heart, then, but Hulga also has a fake leg. Her brain soars, but her body can be seen as broken.
On the one hand, Hulga has it good: She has someone to care for her, after all, and was able to go to school for a good many years. But there are still serious downsides to her existence. She is isolated and lonely, and the feeling of superiority she nurtures in the company of her mom and Mrs. Freeman stands on shaky legs—they're only two people, after all—which leaves her vulnerable to people with bad intentions… like Manley.
Here, then, we can see her weak heart and lost leg as symbols for her vulnerability. Yes, her physical heart is weak, but so it her metaphorical one—she is not wise to the ways of the world and the ways in which people work. So while she stands steadily in the company she keeps at home, she's actually on shaky footing when she encounters someone from beyond the safety of her home.
Victimizer
While there are plenty of sympathetic aspects to Hulga, she's also painted as a victimizer. Neither her mother nor Mrs. Freeman seem too upset about Hulga's stomping and pouting around the house, but her intentions toward Manley are far from benevolent. We're told:
During the night she imagined that she seduced him. She imagined […]that things came to such a pass that she very easily seduced him and that then, of course, she had to deal 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. (90)
Here we see Hulga planning to use what she thinks is her position of power to manipulate Manley, whom she believes to be vulnerable. It's sort of funny, right? Like, she thinks she's so worldly—she calls herself a "true genius"—that she's in a position to teach him a thing or two… but, of course, she isn't worldly at all, and he's the one who winds up giving her what might be called "a deeper understanding of life." Oops.
Hulga, God, and Nothing
Hulga has a complex belief system, and we first get the background on it from her mother. Mrs. Hopewell tells Manley that Hulga "is an atheist and won't let me keep the Bible in the parlor" (31). Okay: So Hulga was raised Christian, but is now an atheist. Hulga confirms this when she tells Manley that she doesn't "even believe in God" (96), even reiterating herself later and saying, "I told you I didn't believe in God" (102). So, that's one aspect of her belief system: She doesn't believe in God. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
But that doesn't mean Hulga's belief-less. Instead, what she does believe in is "nothing" (115). No, she's not being clever—she really means it. Hulga's philosophical foundation is in nothing, which is a way of O'Connor telling us she's a nihilist. Remember that philosophy degree Hulga has? Well, nihilism is a philosophical strain that, in its simplest terms, basically means there's no real basis for judging right from wrong. Hulga, then, believes in the truth of nothing, and from this, that everything people believe is constructed instead of somehow essentially true.
Hulga's not as good of a nihilist/atheist as she fancies herself to be, though, and we think Hulga does believe in God, at least on occasion. For instance, Mrs. Hopewell remembers that after she "made the remark […] that a smile never hurt anyone," Joy said:
"Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God! […] Malebranche was right: we are not our own light. We are not our own light!" (18)
Malebranche did believe in God, and believed that everything—including what animates human beings, a.k.a. our "light"—comes from God. So, according to that passage, Hulga believes in God as well; she believes in Malebranche's position, enough that she invokes it against her mother. At least, you know, in this moment.
Further proving that Hulga is only a sometimes-nihilist, but she also believes—sometimes—that good country people are good. The mere possibility of goodness as an actual thing is at odds with nihilism and its claim that there is no such actual thing as good and bad, right and wrong, and so on and so forth. Just look at how Hulga invokes goodness in this interaction with Manley:
"Aren't you," she murmured, "aren't you just good country people?"
[…] "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."
[…]
Her face was almost purple. "You're a Christian!" she hissed. "You're a fine Christian! You're just like them all—you say one thing and do another. You're a perfect Christian, you're…" (134-139)
You know how earlier on—before their rendezvous—Hulga wants to get Manley to go against his principles and then show him that those principles don't really matter? Part of her ability to entertain such a fantasy is based on the belief that he is good, and as such, won't hurt her. She wants to do the hurting, to upend everything he holds dear.
And this desire, as well as how shocked and appalled she is in the above excerpt, shows both just how much she takes Manley at his word, as well as the fact that she really does believe in right and wrong. Otherwise she wouldn't feel so betrayed. If Hulga truly believed in nothing as the ultimate truth, it wouldn't matter what Manley does, nor would she have so readily believed in his fundamental safety and goodness. So while she sets out to upend Manley's belief, in the end she really exposes her own. Oops.
Now, if you'd be so kind, we highly recommend that you check out Manley's analysis elsewhere in this section. You may be surprised by how often Hulga comes up.
Hulga's Timeline