The Female Tragedy in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

Who wrote the plot of the novel?

'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been' is written by Joyce Carol Oates. Oates is one of the most famous female writers in contemporary American literature. Although she claimed that she was not a feminist writer, she tried to show the lives and destinies of female characters in many novels and short stories.

“ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” is one of the Oates' famous short stories. It first appeared in 1966, at the peak of the second wave of women's liberation. Through the tragic story about the girl Connie, the weakest member in the female world, this novel shows Oates' immature and incomplete feminist view in his early literary creation. This essay attempts to analyze the reason of Connie's tragedy under the joint action of male and female characters.

The plot of the novel is not complicated. One night, while walking around the mall with her friends, Connie met a boy with 'loose black hair and an old convertible car painted gold' (Oates) One day soon after, when Connie was left alone by her family, the boy tricked and threatened Connie to go out of the house. At the end of the story, Connie obeys the boy's will, and her tragedy unfolds: she faces the possibility of being hurt by the evil boy and his friends. Her tragedy was caused directly by Arnold, but also indirectly by her family and herself. The causes of Connie's tragedy mainly come from two aspects: male's neglect and oppression, and female's exclusion and passivity.

Male: neglect and oppression

The male characters featured in the novel include Connie's father, the boy Eddie, Arnold friend, and his friend Eli Oscar. All of them are more or less related to the heroine of this novel and her ultimate tragic fate. Among the three men, Connie's father and the boy Arnold are the most closely related to Connie's tragedy.

Connie's father is the representative of the American patriarchal society. He was the head of the family and one of Connie's closest relatives, but all he cared about was himself. The lack of communication between him and his daughter makes it difficult for the latter to feel the warmth and care of the family, only to feel a deep loneliness. In search of comfort from home, Connie had to go out and hang out with other teenagers. And this kind of behavior is extremely dangerous for a beautiful girl living in a hostile and violent turbulent society.

Father's behavior is a kind of domestic violence of inaction. It is this kind of domestic violence that forced Connie out of the house, facing unknown dangers. His father could not give Connie enough security, only indifference. Connie's father in the novel does not have his name, which makes his identity more universal. He can be the father of any woman. As a group of men, they dominate the society full of indifference and violence towards women.

Compared with Connie's father's cold violence towards Connie, Arnold's friend directly insulted the girl with words and probably hurt her physically in the end. When he coaxed Connie out of the house, he kept swearing to destroy Connie's will. Also, Arnold's friend threatened Connie with words, making Connie “burst out crying bitterly. She was trapped in this crying as she was trapped in this house.” (Oates)

The metaphor suggests that Connie is as beholden to Arnold's friend as she is to her family. Eventually, she is threatened by Arnold out of the house, becomes the devil's prey. At the last moment, Connie could only “see herself slowly pushing open the door and seeing the body and the head with the long hair go out into the sunlight, where Arnold friend was waiting.” (Oates) These words showed that Connie knew that only danger awaited her, but she was not strong enough to protect herself from the danger outside the door. The moment is neatly blended with the Bob Dylan song 'now it's all over, blue baby': Connie's innocence, even her life, is about to be destroyed, and Connie is going to be a poor, sad baby.

From Arnold's friend, we can not only find the dominance of men over women, but also the aesthetic standards set by men to control women. Arnold's friend seduced Connie more than anyone else because Connie was a beautiful girl by the male world's standards of beauty. In their conversation, Arnold said of Connie's sister pearl, “and your sister in the blue dress, huh? And high heels, that sad wretch -- nothing like you, my dear!” (Oates) Pearl was about to be verbally insulted by men like Arnold simply because she was “average-looking, short and fat.” (Oates) “She’s too fat. I don't like them to be that fat. I like you, dear.” (Oates) The male world sets a standard for the beauty, ugliness, fatness, and thinness of women, and uses this standard to control and dominate their body and spirit.

Female: exclusion and passivity

In this short story, there are mainly three female characters related to Connie: Connie's mother, Connie's sister Pearl and Connie herself. They have very different personalities in the novel. The difference in the character created a different fortune in their life.

Connie's mother is a typical American housewife. She did not have any personality characteristics but appeared as Connie's mother, the protagonist of the novel. She had no advantages to make herself unique in society, so she had to stay at home and become the servant of other family members without any help from her husband. Connie's father went out to work, and when he came home, he would only wait to be served by Connie's mother. She is also a champion of male authority and obeys the standards men set for women.

In a male-dominated society, the role of women is to stay at home like Connie's mother. Even when a woman goes out to work, she can only do jobs that are designed for women and fit their role. As a loyal follower of male authority, Connie's mother constantly scolded Connie's rebellious behavior in front of Connie's father.

Connie resented her passivity under male control. Moreover, Connie's mother appeared as Connie's oppressor on the path of pursuing freedom and joy. She had once been young and beautiful, but now she was old and pale, and Connie, her daughter, was young and beautiful. Connie's youthful beauty contrasted sharply with her decline in appearance, so she always belittled Connie, a graceful daughter. It wasn't just her daughter she was belittling, it was her friends. 'Her mother, calling her sisters, complaining about this and that, complaining about that and that.' (Oates)

Connie's mother, under the domination of male authority, never realized her submissive personality and passive situation. She was not only satisfied with her situation but also set a standard for Connie to make Connie in the same situation. When Connie failed to meet this standard, she used her mother's status to insult Connie wantonly. Instead of uniting with her fellow women, she distinguished herself by disparaging them.

In the second sex, Simone Beauvoir pointed out that “the reason why a person is a woman is not so much ‘born’ as ‘formed’.” As the mother's preferred daughter, Connie's sister pearl is an angel of formation. She had her job as a secretary at Connie's school. The work she does is socially recognized as appropriate to a woman's role and identity. She was also a model of obedience to the authority established by men for women. She was praised and favored by her mother only because she helped with housework and because she was 'average-looking, short and fat but staid'. (Oates)

These characteristics enable her to become a housewife like her mother. But beyond that, she had no personality, just like her mother. Because she had a lot in common with her mother, plus her passivity and obedience, she was regarded as superior to Connie. But she paid no attention to the plight of her sister Connie. What she did was not to defend Connie and help Connie out of difficulties, but to pay little attention to Connie's affairs and lack of communication with the latter.

Connie is a girl of two sides. 'Everything she has two sides, one for her family and the other for anyone else who does not belong in the family.' (Oates) At home, she is the rebel of traditional female roles. She was in sharp contrast to pearl, the angel of the family. She was lovely, charming, and knew herself in a way that her mother and sister did not. Her reproaches to her mother and indifference to her sister's showed rebellion. Her sister did the housework for the family, and she would hang out with other boys and girls.

Outside, however, she pandered to male standards of beauty. Influenced by male social values, she had learned how to attract and please men, and her behavior ultimately led to her tragedy. When she was seduced and threatened by Arnold, she was too frightened to resist. It was too late for her to ask her mother for help. Because my mother and the rest of the family had gone to the barbecue, and they had never before thought of coming together to protect themselves from male violence. Her weakness and passivity, exploited by evil forces, make her a victim of male lust and violence. 'When Connie, an innocent woman, comes out of the room to face the possible outcome of her death, she also represents the spiritual death of women at the moment when they give up their independence and submit to the threat of male sexual desire.'

Connie's father and Arnold's friend are both representatives of the patriarchal society. Their behavior illustrates the dilemma faced by American women in the 1960s: they either stayed at home and faced control from male members of the family; or go out and face danger and violence from a male-dominated society. The three women in the story shows three distinct personalities. Connie's mother was a champion of male dominance; Connie's sister is a model woman in a male-dominated society.

Connie, on the other hand, has two sides as a rebel and a follower. But they also share certain traits: they are submissive to varying degrees to male authority; they all repressed each other to highlight themselves rather than unite with each other. And these traits were shared to some extent by most American women in the 1960s. Although Oates did not hold a strong and mature view of feminism in the 1960s, and she even openly claimed that she was not a feminist, she was still concerned about some social issues against women during this period.

'Where to go' is a typical example of her concern about the violence faced by women in and out of the home. With sympathy for women, she tried to discuss the causes of women's misfortune from both male and female aspects in her works. Connie's tragedy shows that women's misfortune is not caused by men. It is also because women cannot unite with each other and are subject to the control of men.

References

1. Joyce Carol Oates. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, Epoch, 1966, https://www.cusd200.org/cms/lib7/IL01001538/Centricity/Domain/361/oates_going.pdf
2. Beauvoir Simone. The Second Sex, H. M. Parshley Trans New York, Knopf, 1952, pp.267
3. Korb Rena. An overview of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, Short Stories for Students, Detroit, Gale, 2002. Literature Resources from Gale Web, 18 May 2012.