She lives modestly and looks back longingly on their family history, reminiscing about the family plantation as well as the political and social influence held by previous generations of the family. .
However, Julian and his mother have a very complex relationship. Julian considers his mother to be an embarrassment because of her overt display of racism. None of his mother's actions is free of racial overtones and she is ostentatiously racist in disregarding the wishes of Carver's mother. Her action conveys a complete dismissal of the wishes of the child's mother and emphasizes her own satisfaction; in essence, promoting the inferiority of the wishes of Carver's mother. By mistake, Julian does not take into consideration the generational gap existing between him and his mother. Although the author, O'Connor, possesses strong anti-racist sentiments, he also simultaneously evokes pity for the "innocent" mother of Julian and criticizes her actions. .
The narrator describes her eyes as "sky-blue, [they] were as innocent and untouched by experience as they must have been when she was ten" (397). This implies that she is innocent, like a child, she does not know what she is saying and doing, but it also criticizes her. The reason is a woman of her age should not be "untouched by experience." She should have learned from it. O'Connor presents Julian's mother as an impossible paradox: uneducated, parroting her past, loud and overtly racist, but also generous, loving, and naive. Ironically, she is granted a return to childhood after the stroke she suffers when her mind loses touch with a reality she does not like.
Julian's relationship with his mother is power centered. He tends to assume the dominant role, while subjecting his mother to his vindictiveness and "enlightened" philosophies. In reality, he himself is a different kind of racist. He is far more concerned with class status in relation to black people and makes this apparent in the type of men and women he befriends.
