In Response to Dana, Mother Troubles and Father Figures

Interesting connection there--your post got me thinking about the ways that absence of a father figure is used in both stories. I don't know how it was for everyone else, but when I was a kid, my dad was always the scary disciplinarian and my mom was the one we all went (haha...go) to for intervention. I can't speak from experience, but I would speculate that, after the death of one parent, the remaining parent struggles to take on the full burden of the resentment that inevitably comes out of disciplinary actions. Interestingly, these two characters, Hulga and Asbury, have fraught relationships with two very indulgent remaining parents--incidentally, two indulgent mothers. Mrs. Hopewell and Asbury's mother both make cheery attempts to ignore and smooth over the abrasive behaviour of their children--the difference, in my mind, is that Asbury's mother makes an innocent effort to encourage her son's artistic pursuits, whereas Mrs. Hopewell knows (and desires to know) nothing about Hulga the Philosopher. Asbury's mother hopelessly suggests that he should add the Civil War to his unwritten novel because it "always makes a long book,"but at least she let him go try his luck in the dairy with her workers, and at least she came to visit him in the city. Asbury's mother accepts the fact that she does not understand her son--her's is a position of (many too indulgent) humility. She at least attempts to respect Asbury, even in his self-absorption. Mrs. Hopewell, on the other hand, is completely alienated from her daughter, and "[thinks] of her still as a child because it tore her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her thirties." For Mrs. Hopewell, Hulga's life work is so foreign that reading a passage of Heidigger is akin to "an evil incantation."

Which brings me back to missing fathers: Hulga lost her leg in a hunting accident, during which "the leg had been literally blasted off." Now, call me crazy, but I can't see Mrs. Hopewell out on a hunting expedition with her 10 year old daughter. She just doesn't seem like the type. This is probably an incredible stretch, but I'm going to conjecture that Hulga's absent and totally unmentioned father actually shot her leg off. Now there is some Freud for you. Castration, mutilation, Oedipus complexes run amok. I'm going to support my guess by the careful position in which O'Connor has placed these details in the paragraph: the leg itself is an artificial secret--a "hidden deformity" which fascinates Mrs. Freeman. O'Connor emphasizes her delight in the secret, the insidious. (And I think my favorite O'Connor line of all time: "Of diseases, she preferred the lingering or incurable.") Yet, there is something in the actual narrative of the event that fascinates Mrs. Freeman--it is not simply that she enjoys staring at Hulga in person: rather, O'Connor writes that she "could listen to [the story] any time as if it had happened an hour ago." But, to me, a sudden, violent shot-gun wound doesn't seem to me to be as secret, mysterious or insidious as the usual subjects of Mrs. Freeman's fancy. Tragic, disturbing, morbid, yes. But also loud, obvious, sudden, public. There has to be some especially gruesome detail--some creepy little secret--that keeps her coming back for more: and I suspect the secret is that Hulga's father was involved.
In terms of gender and use-value, Hulga's use-value is as negligible as Asbury's: in a farming community, she sits around all day reading by herself, and doesn't seem to contribute much. However, unlike Asbury, she doesn't seem to be disappointing any expectations as far as her use-value is concerned: if anything, her mother seems to think her phD makes her sexually ambigious/ neutral if not masculine. Her emphasis is on the fact that she can't tell anyone that her "daughter is a philosopher," and on the fact that Hulga is not interested in nice young men.

Asbury, on the other hand, faces a very different set of circumstances: he is a son missing a father, and a father with a high use-value at that. Asbury's mother seems to be under the impression that education has feminized her son, making him less competent, less sensible and more susceptible to the influence of his emotions. She wants him to "do real work, not writing." And here we have Asbury calling in a Catholic Father, to help him enact the drama of his dying god setpiece, only to meet with authoritarian doctrines that leave him frustrated. Really, the conversation with the priest made me think of the classic, kick-in-the-pants father trying to knock a bit of arrogance and self-indulgence out of their kid--I'm not entirely unsympathetic and it might be safe to guess that acerbic, Catholic O'Connor wasn't either.