While both Joy/Hulga of Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country
People" and Laura Winglfield of Tennessee Williams's The Glass
Menagerie are two young handicapped women entrapped in lives of discontent
and they do share some other similarities, there are yet many differences between
them.
Disabilities
Both
Hulga and Laura have something wrong with their legs that affects many of their
attitudes. Hulga compensates for her disability by acquiring an education so that she
can be superior intellectually. However, Laura lets her crippled leg make her feel
inferior. She is always self-conscious and is submissive to her mother and
uncomfortable with others such as Jim O'Connor as she feels inferior because her
leg.
Personality and family
relationship
Clearly much more of an
individual than Laura Wingfield, Joy renames herself Hulga to express her disdain for
her mother; with her education--a PhD.--she feels herself superior to her mother and
Mrs. Hopewell. Her arrogance, however, makes her vulnerable to Manley Pointer, who
subtly manipulates her. When he steals her artificial leg, he takes her identity.
Nevertheless, Hulga's experience leaves her open to believe in something else besdes the
nothingness that she has embraced. For Hulga, faith is simple when she is open to it as
she can be at the end of the story.
Laura, too, has an
identity problem, but she withdraws in her paralyzing shyness into the past, listening
to the records of her father and cleaning and toying with her fragile glass menagerie.
She is unable to acquire any education beyond high school as she is so timid that she
cannot learn to type at the Rubicund Business College. Totally dominated by her mother,
who refuses to recognize her attempts at self-expression when Laura explains that she
enjoyed going to the museums and zoo instead of the business school, Laura lives at
home subjugated to the desires of her mother and conflicts of her brother. However, when
Jim O'Connor, the gentleman caller, recognizes her as the girl in whom he was interested
in while at high school, he gives Laura some hope as he mitigates her problems by saying
that all she needs is confidence. But, when Tom abandons the family, poor Laura is
unlikely to find love and fulfillment. Looking in at her, Tom bids her goodbye, telling
her "Blow out your candles,
Laura...."
Religiousness
The
hostile Hulga rejects all belief in anything and finds solice in her vain
intellectualism. Ironically, she is saved as her moment of ephiphany comes when Manley
Pointer, the bible salesman proves himself evil. As is typical of O'Connor's stories,
the moment of faith is often accompanied by the
grotesque.
On the other hand, the meek and conciliatory
Laura achieves no salvation from her life although she is dressed for the "gentleman
caller" as though she were the Madonna with Amanda, her mother, kneeling adjusts the hem
"devout and ritualistic." For, the "holy candles in the
altar of Laura's face have been snuffed out" [Williams's stage directions]
when Jim reveals that he is engaged, but comes to dinner because Tom has invited
him.
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