Theme Of Feminism In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

In the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor patriarchy and feminism are shown throughout the story through the characters. Privileges and favor is shown to males in the story to prove a point that we are living in a patriarchal society. This is shown through the grandma, the mother, and the children. Males in the story are given names even the boy, John Wesley, and even by the end of the story we don’t know the grandma or the mother’s name. Lastly, men are shown to have more power even through the little boy John Wesley, who talks backed to his grandmother, who is many years older than him.

The ways the characters portrayed what is supposedly masculine and feminine was when the author wrote about the type of clothes the grandma is wearing. She is wearing

“...the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (357, O’Connor).

This

When the author wrote “ Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy” (356). From this line you can see how much dependence women had on men in the story for their well-being. The grandmother is living with Bailey, who you can tell from the line is not the only child she has, but the only boy she has, showing that she can’t live with her daughters. It has to be her son because of women’s dependency on men, as well as trying to convince her children to not go to Florida due to her conscience not letting her be able to live with it even if they come back unharmed. This is showing her being extremely emotional as a woman “should be” in the