Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

When Joyce Carol Oates first published the short story entitled "Where Are You Going, Where Have you Been?", many readers were uncomfortable with the actions of the major character known as Connie since her behavior often reminded them of someone they may have known. The difficulties that Connie encounters throughout the story expose the audience to the questions the author is raising and forces them to examine the deep psychological problems that people, such as themselves, often face during their own lifetime. Readers, therefore, gain a better understanding of the character through the emotions that are a result of their own experiences. In other words, the approach known as psychological criticism has readers focus their attention on a literary work by analyzing the presentation after they have interpreted the actions and the conflicts that actually determine the outcome of the character within the story under consideration. To accomplish that goal, not only must one examine the text closely in order to obtain an effective psychological profile of the character, but they must also delve into the actual psyche of a character such as Connie in order to have a better comprehension of her actions. When that information finally becomes clear to them, readers do grasp a better understanding of her actions and can justify why it is that Connie actually leaves with Arnold Friend.

For over thirty years critics have debated over Connie's decision to leave with Arnold Friend because readers find it unnatural for a young woman to leave with a total stranger. Critics find this a significant issue in literary criticism because it questions Connie's values and morals, and the author's intent. Some critics, like Marie Urbanski, believe that Connie leaves with Arnold because she is, "bowing to absolute forces which her youthful coquetry cannot direct - absolute forces over which she has no control" (78). Urbanski and other critics feel that Arnold's persuasive demeanor forces Connie into his hands because she cannot resist his seductive temptations, which in turn, create other "forces" within Connie's mind which prevent her from having a clear judgment towards the situation. Another critic, Tom Quirk, scratches the surface of Connie's psyche by believing that "there is a fire inside Connie's brain" to rebel against the "American Dream" of "hearth and home and innocent youth" and that she leaves with Arnold to rebel against the norms of society (88). Quirk comes very close in understanding Connie's motivation but he needs to go one step further by delving deeper into her psyche to find out why she left with Arnold. To probe Connie's mind we need to ask deeper questions such as: What was Connie's home life like? What kind of relationship did Connie have with her parents and sister? Whom did Connie associate with outside of the home? What kind of life did Arnold offer Connie? Finally, did Connie leave on her own free will? Once we build a psychological profile of Connie we will be able to answer these questions and conclude that Connie leaves with Arnold Friend on her own free will.

In one of his essays, Bernard Paris states that readers must expect "the central characters of realistic fiction be like real people, that they have a life of their own beyond the control of the author," and in order to recognize a necessity such as that, one must first examine the backgrounds presented to them by the author (230). To gain a better profile of Connie, one must understand the interactions she has with the members of her family, the involvement she has with other people, the interesting places she finds the most enjoyable, and the influences she experiences form certain events that have an effect on her behavior. For example, when Connie is fifteen years old, she has "a quick, nervous giggling habit" of craning her neck either to glance into a mirror or to study the face of someone else as a way of increasing her self-confidence (25). Like a normal teenager, she is slightly insecure and hopes her friends will accept her by basing their decision on appearance as well as behavior. By being aware of the fact that others consider her attractive, Connie is unafraid of flaunting herself, and her mother asks her more than once to quit "gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?" (25).

Not only does Connie live with her mother, but her twenty-four year old sister, June, and her father also share the same house. The relationship that Connie has with her mother is somewhat questionable because she always considers her daughter prettier and younger even though she "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" (25). The relationship with the sister is also unpleasant because the mother praises June more often because there are nine years of difference between Connie and Jean; in addition, their sibling rivalry is still in existence. She does consider June somewhat boring because her sister has somewhat established herself to a degree, continues living at home in spite of that, and often returns home at night whenever she chooses. Even though most people consider her a responsible adult, at the age of twenty-four, June

still lived at home. She was a secretary in the high school Connie attended, and if that wasn't enough--with her in the same building--she was so plain

and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time by her mother and her mother's sisters. June did this, June did that, she saved

money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn't do a thing, her mind was filled with trashy daydreams. (26)

With her mother constantly praising June as the better of the two, a great deal of resentment develops between Connie and her mother; in fact, she often "wished her mother was dead and she herself dead" from all the disagreements that she and her mother and June experience with one another on a regular basis (30). Furthermore, Connie actually imagines "her mother preferred her to June because she was prettier, but the two of them kept up a pretense of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over something of little value to either one of them" (30). Her father is also unhelpful because he works during the day, arrives home late each evening, and as a result of his exhaustion, "[reads] the newspaper

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