The Conditions of Will

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of rape, sexual violence, emotional abuse, anti-gay bias, cursing, and child abandonment.

Georgia Carter’s return to her hometown compels her to finally confront her past and begin to heal from her trauma. Ten years before the narrative present, Georgia’s parents Margaret and Will send her away to London, England, because they believe she had sex with her sister’s boyfriend, Beckett. In reality, Beckett sexually assaulted Georgia repeatedly for a year—abuse Maryanne knew about and did nothing. This past trauma establishes the stakes for Georgia’s return to Okatie, South Carolina, for her father’s funeral. Just driving up to her childhood home forces her to face the pain she’s been compartmentalizing throughout her life in London. Through Georgia’s first-person perspective, Hastings emphasizes that when she ignores her past trauma it “lodges itself in the corners of our memories, hangs off tree branches on Callawassie Drive [or] hides under the pews in the back row of the church” (17), explicitly tying Georgia’s psychological and emotional pain to the physical spaces of her childhood. Because she hasn’t confronted the past, she can’t fully move beyond her trauma.