In two of Flannery O'Connor's stories, "A View of the Woods" and "Greenleaf", she pits characters who favor the status quo against characters who represent change. In different ways, Mark Fortune and the Greenleaf family represent progress. Mark Fortune is old, but he actively encourages what he sees as progress. Whether it really is progress is not important. What is important is that he believes change is good and wants the world to change, whether or not other people want it to. The irony of the story is that there will always be those who do not want change and Fortune has, unknowingly, chosen to put the future in the hands of the past by selecting his granddaughter Mary Fortune Pitts as his heir.
In "Greenleaf," the Greenleaf family is not active about the changes in which they are involved. They do not, like Mark Fortune, make a point of working for change. For them, change just occurs inevitably. Mrs. May, in opposing the Greenleafs, understands, as neither they nor any of the children really do, that the Greenleaf sons represent progress. She lays it out for her own sons and explains how, one day, the children of the Greenleafs will be the leaders of society. Mary Fortune Pitts is not really aware of her conservative role either. She, as her grandfather taught her, simply knows that she wants what she wants.
The two points of view, progressive and conservative, can be either consciously or unconsciously adopted by individuals. But the unconscious ones still have some idea of what they represent. Mr. Greenleaf's taunts about Mrs. May's sons are boasts about his own, though he does not think of them as example of progress or hers as examples of the status quo. When Mrs. May, driving Mr. Greenleaf out to kill the bull, remarked that "'Spring is here!", "Mr. Greenleaf lifted one muscle somewhere near his mouth as if he found this the most asinine remark ever made" (303). The Greenleafs, as their name indicate...