The Humbling of Prideful Women
It has been said that God will humble those who refuse to humble themselves. This certainly seems to be the case for the protagonists in the short Stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor and “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant. “The Necklace” tells the story of Mathilde, a French woman whose pride drives her insatiable materialistic nature and transforms her into her own antagonist through a journey of self-destruction. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” introduces us to a Southern Grandmother whose prideful nature ultimately proves to be her fatal flaw during an encounter with the antagonist known as “The Misfit”. Despite the vastly different events of these two stories, they both demonstrate how …show more content…
The grandmother’s sense of pride leads to an overinflated sense of self-importance resulting in manipulation tactics to get what she desires or what she feels is best for her family. As the story opens, we find the grandmother arguing with her son to persuade him to travel to Tennessee rather than the family’s planned destination of Florida. The grandmother states, "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida…I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (O’Connor para. 1). This statement shows the grandmother’s pride in the way she references her superior conscience. This statement also serves as foreshadowing of the family’s impending encounter with the antagonist known as “The Misfit” later in the story. The grandmother’s pride is demonstrated not only by her statements but also by her appearance. She wears a fine navy blue dress with small white dots in the print, a blue straw sailor hat, and she wears white gloves. The grandmother’s appearance is important to her so “anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” The grandmother’s pride is unwavering; she has made sure her appearance is appropriate even in death, which foreshadows the events resulting from her prideful actions later in the
It has been said that God will humble those who refuse to humble themselves. This certainly seems to be the case for the protagonists in the short Stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor and “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant. “The Necklace” tells the story of Mathilde, a French woman whose pride drives her insatiable materialistic nature and transforms her into her own antagonist through a journey of self-destruction. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” introduces us to a Southern Grandmother whose prideful nature ultimately proves to be her fatal flaw during an encounter with the antagonist known as “The Misfit”. Despite the vastly different events of these two stories, they both demonstrate how …show more content…
The grandmother’s sense of pride leads to an overinflated sense of self-importance resulting in manipulation tactics to get what she desires or what she feels is best for her family. As the story opens, we find the grandmother arguing with her son to persuade him to travel to Tennessee rather than the family’s planned destination of Florida. The grandmother states, "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida…I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (O’Connor para. 1). This statement shows the grandmother’s pride in the way she references her superior conscience. This statement also serves as foreshadowing of the family’s impending encounter with the antagonist known as “The Misfit” later in the story. The grandmother’s pride is demonstrated not only by her statements but also by her appearance. She wears a fine navy blue dress with small white dots in the print, a blue straw sailor hat, and she wears white gloves. The grandmother’s appearance is important to her so “anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” The grandmother’s pride is unwavering; she has made sure her appearance is appropriate even in death, which foreshadows the events resulting from her prideful actions later in the