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Hulga Hopewell is the adult daughter of Mrs. Hopewell. She and her mother live together on their family farm. As a child, Hulga lost her leg in a hunting accident. Afterward, she thought of herself as ugly and changed her inner self to match. She left the farm and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy. Her weak heart forced her to return home to her mother’s care, though she would prefer teaching at college to people who understand her, far from home and the simple, uneducated people that surround her. She feels that her education makes her superior to those around her, including her mother.
Hulga is sensitive about her wooden leg, simultaneously ashamed and proud of it. She “[takes] care of it as someone else would his soul.” Her soul, ironically, is like the leg: wooden and hollow. She has no faith, believing it to be incompatible with intelligence and seeing herself as a nihilist and atheist. She cynically rejects religious and moral principles. Hulga sees good, evil, even love, as illusions that she can “see through to nothing."
Despite her supposedly clear sight, she does not see through Manley Pointer’s con. She thinks that he is a “good country person,” which to her means stupid, innocent, and gullible. Her decision to seduce him comes from a desire to prove that intelligence is superior to faith. However, Manley shows that his worldly experience beats her academic book smarts. His false innocence and earnestness erode her defenses and she “surrender[s] to him completely.” She trades her belief in nothing to a belief in him. By taking Hulga’s wooden leg and showing his true self, Manley leaves her shocked, disillusioned, and alone, but she gains new insight into herself and the world around her.
