Feminism and historicism play an important role in Flannery O'Connor's short story, “Good Country People”, first published in 1955. The story focuses on the importance of identity and the parallels between truth and deception. In "Good Country People," the Hopewell family runs a small farm in rural Georgia with the help of the Freeman tenants. The pious Mrs. Hopewell's mottos "nothing is perfect" and "it takes all kinds to make the world" manifest in her unmarried thirty-two-year-old daughter, Joy, who later changes her name to Hulga, wears a prosthetic peg leg to due to a childhood accident. Hulga who has a Ph.D. in Philosophy, he cannot pursue his academic aspirations due to a weak heart; for this reason he has to live in his childhood home with his mother. Regardless of her upbringing, Hulga's mother believes her daughter is completely nonsensical; Hulga's real fault is that she ignores her surroundings. He personally finds his mother and Mrs. Freeman's faith senseless because he sees it as inauthentic. Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga initially trust the Bible peddler, Manley Pointer, who visits the farm; they both believe it comes from "good country people", but soon discover that this is not the case. The feminist element is a general theme in all of Flannery O'Connor's works; it is important to note, however, that O'Connor did not want to be easily identified as a feminist, she wanted her characters not to deny their femininity but to "exploit" it sometimes to the point of parody (Smith 35); he wanted his readers to “give credit” to his characters for “using intelligent strategy in an attempt to survive in a man's world” (Smith 35). With this, O'Connor provokes his readers not only to have compassion for... the medium of paper... which, I believe, has taken over; the separation between mother and daughter, the invisible umbilical cord, is still attached. Hulga wants to believe in "good country people", her roots are strong, but she is just as easily disappointed and defrauded by the promise of new things far from the Hopewell farm. Works Cited Desmond, John F. "Flannery O'Connor and the Symbol." Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5.2 (2002): 143-56. Print.Schaum, Melita. ""Erasing Angel": The Trickster Figure of Lucifer in Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction." The Southern Literary Journal 33.1 (Fall 2000): 1-26. Print.Smith, Peter A. “Flannery O'Connor's Emancipated Women.” The Southern Literary Journal 26.2 (Spring, 1994): 35-47. Print.Westling, Louise. "The Mothers and Daughters of Flannery O'Connor." Twentieth Century Literature 24.4 (Winter, 1978): 510-22. Press.