The Good Corn is a traditional short story written in 1951 by English writer, H.E Bates. When an infertile famer’s wife discovers her husband has been unfaithful with the naive farm hand, she forgives him and they decide to take responsibility for the baby and raise it as their own. Moon, 2009, describes a closed text as a text that gives limited opportunities to produce multiple meanings. The Good Corn is a closed text. It represents dominant ideologies of western culture.
In my initial reading of the text I sympathised with the female protagonist in the story; Mrs Mortimer. I saw her as a lonely, damaged mother without a child. She appeared lost and vulnerable. I believed Mr Mortimer took advantage of her sadness and prayed on her vulnerability when he wanted forgiveness for being unfaithful. I had no sympathy for his character. From the gaps in the text I read Elsie – the farm hand – as being slightly naive and uneducated. I didn’t judge her for the affair like I did Mr Mortimer. Instead I saw her as a neutral party. I concluded that she didn’t know any better. These interpretations were influenced by my personal experiences and ideologies that come with being a middle-class female in a dominant western society. As a female, I automatically sympathise with Mrs Mortimer’s inability to conceive a child. My judgement on Mr Mortimer comes from my understanding of what is unacceptable in my culture, my belief in monogamy and also from my personal experiences with infidelity. Mrs and Mr Mortimer were foregrounded over Elsie in the story; therefore, I was exposed to their thoughts and emotions more so than Elsie’s. Applying Moon’s, 2009, description of privileging; the privileging of the thoughts, opinions and emotions of Mrs and Mr Mortimer over Elsie was the result of Bates textual organisation combined with my individual reading practices.
After discussion with my tutorial group I began to re-evaluate my initial reading of the text. Moon, 2009, defines polysemy as the ability for words and symbols to have multiple meanings and interpretations. During tutorial discussions the polysemy of this text became apparent as other students had different opinions of the severity of Mr Mortimer’s deceit and also the motivation behind his actions. Some students saw him as a broken and confused man, desperate for love from his grieving wife. After listening to their readings and interpretations of the characters, and re-reading the text, I could understand their differing interpretations. However, my personal experience with infidelity was too influential to my reading so my opinion didn’t change.
During tutorial discussions we also made comparisons between The Good Corn and Turned – a short story that includes similar discourses and ideologies as The Good Corn. Drawing on Moon’s, 2009, theory of intertextuality – the relationships linking multiple texts together – I was able to make further meaning from the text by juxtaposing the two stories. My opinion of the severity of Mr Mortimer’s infidelity declined and Mrs Mortimer’s forgiveness of her husband was easier to accept. This change was influenced by being exposed to the different student’s readings, and also by the reaction of the wives in each story. In Turned, the woman leaves her husband opposed to forgiving him. This left me with a more negative impression of the Turned male protagonist than Mr Mortimer in The Good Corn.
I would use this text in a year 11/12 English lesson as part of a unit that looked at the construction and deconstruction of stories and characters. The text would be a good example of a traditional, orthodox, western narrative. I would use it to teach textual codes, conventions and semiotic analysis of texts. Like in CLB322, I would teach it alongside other texts that represented different cultural ideologies and that were unorthodox or open texts. Brian Moon’s Literary Terms, 2009, would assist in explaining the various textual features of this text and would help students understand what to look for when analysing the text. The Good Corn, as part of a collection of texts analysed, would assist students in understanding the polysemy of texts and the representation of dominant cultural ideologies in narratives.
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