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lady” (O’Connor, “Good Man” 250). Mitchell Owens asserts that “She is very conscious
throughout the story of what people are wearing, because to her it is through such things as
clothing that one can externally reflect internal worth” (102). To highlight the grandmother’s
focus on appearances, the children’s mother is described plainly as “a young woman in slacks,”
showing that in the eyes of the grandmother, she is diminished in value and loses status as a lady
(O’Connor, “Good Man” 249). In addition, the self-aggrandizing view that the grandmother
holds of herself because she does view herself as a lady correlates to the cultural standard present
in O’Connor’s South during that time. There was a notion that people were good based on what
they wore and how they appeared to be.

Despite the outer appearances of being a Southern lady, her attitude is condescending,
continuing to defy the archetypal model of a grandmother. They pass a “shack” and the
grandmother exclaims, “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” (O’Connor, “Good Man” 251).
June Star comments that he wasn’t wearing “any britches,” and the grandmother replies, “He
probably didn’t have any . . . . Little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do”
(O’Connor, “Good Man” 251). The grandmother’s comment of not “hav[ing] things like we do,”
indicates that she obviously thinks her station in life is better than this child’s, and the pejorative
slur establishes her superiority.

Further revealing the grandmother’s condescending attitude is the scene in which she
describes Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden, a suitor from when she was young, who brought her
watermelons every Saturday with his initials, E.A.T, carved into them. One Saturday, a young
black boy ate a watermelon that was left on her front porch, inciting a snide, racist comment
from the grandmother: “[I] never got the watermelon . . . because a nigger boy ate it when he saw
the initials, E.A.T.!” (O’Connor, “Good Man” 251). As the grandmother carelessly mocks those

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