In "Good Country People," how does Hulga feel about her wooden leg? Flannery O'Connor's short story

In Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People," Hulga seems disgruntled about something as she is described as

the large hulking Joy, who constant outrage had obliterated every expression from [Mrs. Hopewell's] face.

When asked by her mother to walk over the fields with her, Joy (as she is named by her mother) makes remarks that are

so ugly and her face so glum that Mrs. Hopewell would say, 'If you can't come prleasantly, I don't want you at all,' to which the girl....would reply, 'if you want me, here I am--LIKE I AM...Mrs. Hopewell excused this attitude because of the leg (which had been shot off during a hunting accident when Joy was ten)

When Joy turns twenty-one, she has her named legally changed to Hulga, a name her mother believes she picked because it is so ugly. Hulga wishes to show her disdain for everything her mother says. When her mother calls her Joy, Hulga will not respond.

From these details, the reader can discern that Hulga is certainly not content with her life.  However, when the Bible salesman talks with her, she admits to being shy, and she arranges to meet him the next day.  As they walk, she is in the lead, with the salesman panting behind.  When he tells her she cannot climb the ladder to the loft, she scoffs and climbs the ladder with ease.  When the boy climbs up and kisses her, he then asks her to show him where her "leg joins on."

The obscenity of the suggestion was not what shocked her....But she was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail.  No one ever touched it but her.  She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away.

Helga probably finds the leg ugly, just like the name she chooses.  It is artificial, making her less of a person, yet in a way she is proud of it. The boy hits the truth when he tells her that the leg is what makes her different.  His striking the truth causes Hulga to let him see where it joins.  When he removes her leg, Hulga feels "entirely dependent" upon him.  Without her leg, she has lost not just her means of walking, but she has also lost her pride.