People often imagine
themselves as characters in stories, but in “The Crop,” when Miss Willerton
pictures herself as a central character in the story she is writing, Miss
Willerton’s imaginings left me feeling sad. I found myself focusing on the
ordinariness of the lives of the imagined Lot and Willie. I began to question
why Willie imagines herself as an ordinary person who faces hardships.
The
average nature of Willie’s life within her story is clear because Willie wakes
up at four o’clock every morning “to get in all the work” she can “while the
weather [is] clear” (O’Connor 38). It is also evident that Willie and Lot face hardships
because, if the couple do not get the harvest in before the rain starts, they
face the possibility of losing “all they had gained in the past months” (O’Connor
38). The moment of Willie’s story that cements the readers’ understanding of the
lower-class life burdened with hardships that Willie chooses for herself is
when Willie says that she and Lot will not have enough money to have both a
child and a cow. Willie’s imagined life is not a life of luxury.
One
would assume that Miss Willerton would want to imagine a life away from all of
her troubles, but instead she imagines a life not far from her reality. The difference
between Miss Willerton’s life and her life as the married Willie is that Willie
has a husband and gives birth to a daughter. The married Willie is happy in her
average life, while Miss Willerton is clearly unhappy with her life.
I
think that Willie imagines herself an average life to show that she does not want
much. She only wants a child like so many others have. The reader can see that
Willie is not greedy. She would be content to spend her life working if she
could simply have a family. It is when Miss Willerton is forced to leave her
dream world and go to the grocery store that the reader can see Miss Willerton’s
jealousy over the lives of many average people around her.
At
the grocery store, Miss Willerton notices a woman with a child on a leash, and the
woman is “pulling him, jerking him, dragging him away from a window with a
jack-o’-lantern” (O’Connor 40). The woman is battling with the child, and Miss
Willerton’s focus on this woman who clearly does not want to have to deal with
the child, makes Miss Willerton’s reasons for imaging a life with both
hardships and a family become clearer to the reader.
Because
Miss Willerton is not greedy, even in her hopeful imaginings, the reader can
more easily pity Miss Willerton. She only wants what others have and take for
granted. What Miss Willerton wishes her life was is not unreasonable, and her
paradise involves things that others don’t appreciate. Miss Willerton’s story
is extremely tragic, especially after one looks closely at the details of the
life that Miss Willerton wishes for.
Hi Danielle! To answer your question, I truly do not believe there is one certain answer as to why Willie wants to live an ordinary life that constantly faces hardships. When I think of writers, I tend to believe that they want to imagine a life that is better than the life they are living in now. I hope that some people believe in a life that is full of bliss and easier than what they are experiencing now. However, Willie imagined a life that was the complete opposite of easy, and she instead imagined a life full of dilemmas and complicated life decisions.
ReplyDeleteMy best assumption of the reason why Willie imagined herself in an ordinary life full of hardships was because this story life was completely different from the life she was living in now. Instead of being told everyday what to do or how to dress by Lucia, Willie could live her life the way she wanted and that was with a man and working on her own land. My guess is that Willie does not have the power to leave the house she currently lives in and does not have the self confidence to find a man and live with him while harvesting a farm. Willie does not have a clear access to this point in her life and I believe that though this story she inserts herself is plain and hard, this is the life she wants and is not able to have. She wants to deal with the “social problem” of rural white poverty: female pastoralism and social realism” because that is what normal, ordinary farmers deal with in reality (Hubbs 1). Willie wants to live a normal life such as everyday farmers, but she cannot as she follows a general routine that is instructed by Lucia and most likely forever living in her current home. Miss Willerton inserts herself in a life that is a dream to her, but from an outsider’s perspective, this life seems like an everyday hard life for a farmer.
https://journals.openedition.org/jsse/1349?lang=en
DeleteHi Danielle!
ReplyDeleteFor some reason while reading your post, I could see where you were coming from, but I have to disagree with you in many aspects. My biggest disagreement with you would have to be that Miss Willerton is jealous of the women she sees with children at the grocery store. I do not think she is jealous of these women at all, I think she believes she is better than those women and she places herself above them. Willie is watching all these people at the grocery store completing their tasks and she thinks to herself “what do they get out of it? Where was there any chance for self-expression, for creation, for art? All around her it was the same – sidewalks full of people scurrying about with their hands full of little packages and their mind full of little packages” (O’Connor 40). To me, Willie here is being extremely judgmental and ignorant. Unlike her these people scurrying about all have responsibilities that they need to get done. They do not have the luxury of spending their whole day in front of a keyboard and imagining their own dream world.
Like Fennick’s article, I would have to argue that Miss Willerton is an extremely prideful woman. She looks down upon all others around her. She believes that because she is a writer and a creator that she is above those around her. I do agree that it is sad that the life she imagines for herself is full of misery and hardship, but I cannot feel all too bad for her because of the way she views others.