After reading Joyce Carol Oates' short story "Where are you going, Where have you been?" I thought that JCO was trying to make a criticism to society. This story written in 1966 talks about a girl named Connie who enjoyed being liked by older men. She would often sexualize herself in order to be attractive to men; she was concerned about her looks, and she liked to take pleasure from other people finding her attractive. It is not until one day a man comes to her house while she is home alone and threatens her with hurting her family if she doesn't come with him, that Connie was watching the consequences of her behavior.
It is described throughout the story that Connie has a lot of conflicts with her family, she doesn't get along with her sister who is seen by her parents as "the perfect daughter", she fights with her mom a lot, her dad works too much and when he would take them to the mall, he wouldn't ask what she and her friend did, showing that he didn't really cared about what her daughter was doing.
I believe that JCO issued a situation that is fairly common in today's society, children living in dysfunctional families which make them have certain issues such as Connie's behavior. Being constantly criticized by her mother, the lack of attention of her father, and being like the "black sheep" of the family, made her look for acceptance in her peers, which would make her too sexual even though she was only fifteen. As a consequence of her behavior, she gets between the eyes of a pervert called Arnold Friend who let her not choice but to come with him to, possibly, rape her.
If we analyze Connie's situation, she was only looking for the acceptance she didn't get at home, and probably her dysfunctional family is the one to blame for the way she acted. It is important to understand that had she been understood and accepted by her family, she would have not have this issues with herself, even though anyone can be a victim of perverts like Arnold.
"Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.
"Why don't you keep your room clean like your sister? How've you got your hair fixed—what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don't see your sister using that junk."
I agree the idea you’ve portrayed, Alberto. I also would like to add that as a teenager, Connie is struggling with the way she wants the world to see her due to she is facing this stage in life called adolescence, in which she is rediscovering herself and the place she’ll be occupying to fit in.
ResponderBorrarIt is also relevant to mention that according to the period of time this story was written, 1966, women were feeling a kind of liberation that empowered them to brake the traditional standards that pointing out that they were supposed to play the role of a housewife, for instance, because they were just meant to do so. In this case, Connie is sexualized in order to face the reality that was outside this “bubble” she lived in, trying to see what was outside—needless to say, this is something that she decided by her own.
Interestingly, Laura Brown, the character of the The Hours, a woman who is actually living the American Dream around the same time and who plays the role of a housewife in the novel—I do not think I should provide more details because we are all aware of the storyline and what I’m talking about, right?—makes the decision to empower herself, not by sexualizing her personality, but by deciding that when leaving her family behind, spouse and children, she would discover her new role in this world. Do you agree with me?
I agree with you, Sergio. What I believe is that society has always given a stereotype of what a woman should be, what is right for a woman to be: a good mother and a good wife. The fact that Connie wanted to sexualize herself it's not wrong, in my opinion, any woman can do whatever they want with their body. What is incorrect here is that she was only fifteen years old, so her family should have cared about what she was doing, wearing, saying and thinking, because they are raising her. She was neglected by her parents which need to be a great support through adolescence.
ResponderBorrar