Superficiality of Appearances in Oates vs. Hawthorne

¶ … superficiality of appearances in Oates vs. Hawthorne

Both the protagonists of Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" And Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" experience revelations over the course of their respective tales about the societies in which they inhabit. Connie, Oates' heroine, learns that the image of teenage sexuality which she believes to be quite powerful is actually very vulnerable and leaves her open to assault from men like Arnold Friend. The hero of Hawthorne's tale learns that the apparently pious inhabitants of the town where he lives are in fact in league with the devil, and their exterior appearances hide an immoral core. The themes of the two stories reflect the notion that appearances are not what they seem and what is sexual is often innocent within; while what seems harmless has a fundamentally dark and rotten core.

At the beginning of "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Oates at first seduces the reader into believing that Connie is a powerful young woman, certain of her own destiny. Unlike her unattractive older sister, fifteen-year-old Connie seems in control of her appearance and her sexuality. However, Connie's physical appearance of beauty is entirely dependent upon the validation of men. Early on in the story Oates hints at the fragility of basing one's sense of self-worth entirely on cultural constructions of femininity. "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." Beauty fades and so does the power beauty has over men -- if it has any real power at all. However, the teenage Connie feels immortal and ignores her mother.

Connie uses her beauty to flirt with boys at the shopping mall. She does not desire them, rather she desires the feeling of power they seem to give her: "All the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July." She looks at and acts much older than she is, and projects an aura of confident sexuality. She does not want to be like her sister at school and she projects a physical appearance that is very sexualized. But Connie is very innocent. Her beauty is something that has simply 'happened' to her, and while she recognizes that society finds it valuable, she does not fully understand what it means, and she overestimates the value of her exterior appearance to protect her from harm. Like a 'good' girl, Connie can be the reflection of whatever people want her to be: "Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out." She thinks she is a 'bad' girl, but after she meets Arnold Friend, she realizes how vulnerable she is: the society that suggested her beauty would protect her from harm and give her all she desired lied to her.

The discrepancy between a character's outer and inner would is not new in American literature, of course. It is also seen in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown." In the story, the title character symbolically wanders through a woods, lost and seeking and comes upon a congregation in which the most upstanding citizens of the town are revealed in their true guises before the devil: "This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds... In every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power -- than my power at its utmost -- can make manifest in deeds."

It is ambiguous at the end of the story whether Goodman Brown has dreamt the evils he saw, or if they really happened. But it does not matter. The vision opens up the possibility in the young man's mind that surface appearances are not necessarily indicative of reality. Brown believed that if someone was pious in church that person must be good, but he realizes in a quick, swift burst of insight that this is not always the case and even the pink ribbons of his wife Faith are not testimony to her virtue.