In Flannery O'Connor's short story "Greenleaf," the protagonist, Mrs. May, is irritated about the bull that is grazing on her land. The bull has sexual connotations because Mrs. May tells her hired hand, Mr. Greenleaf, to get the bull off her property. She's afraid the bull will "ruin the breeding schedule." In other words, this bull, who Mrs. May describes in racially pejorative language, will ruin the fine breeding of her cattle by breeding with...
In Flannery O'Connor's short story "Greenleaf," the protagonist, Mrs. May, is irritated about the bull that is grazing on her land. The bull has sexual connotations because Mrs. May tells her hired hand, Mr. Greenleaf, to get the bull off her property. She's afraid the bull will "ruin the breeding schedule." In other words, this bull, who Mrs. May describes in racially pejorative language, will ruin the fine breeding of her cattle by breeding with them.
Mrs. May's concern with breeding extends to her own sons, Scofield and Wesley. Despite their fine breeding, neither is married, and they are failures in her eyes. They don't help her on the farm, and Scofield sells insurance to African-American people (which Mrs. May, as a racist, does not like), while Wesley is simply what she calls "an intellectual." However, Mr. Greenleaf, who Mrs. May deems well below her on the social ladder, has two sons who've made something of themselves. O.T. and E.T., as they are called, were sent overseas in the service and married French women. Therefore, Mrs. May is also concerned with maintaining the purity of what she considers the upper crust, and she is troubled that Mr. Greenleaf has bred two sons who might one day be considered finer than her own offspring.
Mrs. May's concern over the bull's breeding merges with her concern over her sons' breeding. In the end, she asks Mr. Greenleaf to shoot the bull, but as he's doing so, the bull gores her in an act that can be considered sexual: "She felt the quake in the huge body as it sank, pulling her forward on its head" (last page of the story; page numbers vary according to the edition). This act is highly sexualized, and the bull in some ways represents a threatening sexual element in the story because he can interfere with the purity of Mrs. May's own cattle by breeding with them. Mrs. May has long been afraid of the bull, but he attacks her in the end.
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