She uses a lot of defense mechanism to protect her ego. There are a lot of scenes indicating her insecurity about her weight, and she complements her beautiful skin to herself to protect her ego. Mrs. Turpin has an underlying trait that takes on a very important role in Revelation. She attempts to dominate not only race and class, but also other men and women. This role is important because this gives her character evilness, which is combined with her spirituality. This indicates extreme conflict in her inner-self.
In "Revelation," O'Connor used a great device of binary opposites through the linking of opposites -- two levels of meaning, two viewpoints, two irreconcilable conclusions. As the conversation indicates very much, Mrs. Turpin feels an outrageous degree of self-satisfaction regarding her own position in the world. .
As I've discussed earlier, she has her own caste system categorized in her head; distinctions are made by race and ownership. As she and her husband Claud own a house and a little land to raise pigs on, she considers herself obviously superior to people who own only a house. And since she is white, she considers herself superior to any blacks, regardless of how much property they own. .
There are great uses of binary opposites in this story: Mrs. Turpin thinking that she's the only moral one, and the others are not (immoral), distinct made by Mrs. Turpin between the race, white trash and Negro so to speak, the ones who own property, the ones who don't, reality, and the illusion that she has seen, supposedly by God, which is the revelation, hypocrisy made by Mrs. Turpin between her thoughts and her acts. .
The interesting factor I've discovered going though this story in class during discussion time, is that everyone extremely hated Mrs. Turpin. I questioned them why. One said Mrs. Turpin is a racist and she cannot accept the diction and the discrimination made between white and black used in this story.