Where Are You Going, Where Have You

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? A failure to communicate

The heroine of Joyce Carol Oates "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a young woman who has only just begun to understand the power of her sexuality. Like so many young girls, fifteen-year-old Connie is simultaneously an adult and a teenager: "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; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home" (Oates 1968). Connie knows how to flirt with older boys but she is unaware of the potential consequences of doing so. Tragically, at the end of the tale she is -- Joyce Carol Oates is ambiguous -- either raped or murdered, or both, by a man named Arnold Friend. Arnold spotted Connie when she was 'coming on' to older boys and easily dominates her emotionally before he dominates her physically. An older man, he is no match for her childlike will.

The story of Connie is a common one, and Oates' story is just as relevant as when it was first penned in 1968. What is so frightening about Oates' tale is that it could even more easily happen today. In the era of the Internet, Arnold Friend could lure Connie to his home posing as a young man. And younger girls are assuming sexual personas like Connie. One writer spoke of "8- and 9-year-old Los Angeles girls in a national dance contest. Wearing outfits that would make a stripper blush, they pumped it and bumped it to the Beyonce hit "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" (Orenstein 2010).

Upon viewing the circumstances of Connie before she is attacked by Arnold Friend, a concerned adult reader might be tempted to exclaim: "where are the girl's parents?" Oates speaks of Connie being let off at the mall with her girlfriends late at night by her father, during which they wander for hours. There is a nearby drive-in where older boys offer to buy the girls hamburgers. The girls are breathless with the attention, not because they like the older boys so much as they are intoxicated with the atmosphere and the sense of doing something forbidden. "Their faces pleased and expectant as if they were entering a sacred building that loomed up out of the night to give them what haven and blessing they yearned for" (Oates 1968). Connie is not even old enough to drive, but her parents think that they are acting responsibly, dropping her off at the shopping mall and asking her about the movie she ostensibly saw afterward.

Connie seems to view her parents at best as slightly dense, and even believes that her mother favors Connie and approves of Connie's beauty and seductive power. Connie's mother was once beautiful herself and lives vicariously through Connie. "Connie thought that her mother preferred her to June just 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 of them" (Oates 1968). Connie's sister June, in contrast, is very unexciting and conventional, and Connie's mother seems almost happy that she has a daughter who more perfectly embodies the cultural ideal of beauty. "She [Connie] knew she was pretty and that was everything" (Oates 1968).

Connie's mother has trouble separating her own sense of envy of her daughter's beauty from the concern she might be expected to naturally feel about her daughter's hyper-sexual behavior. She constantly picks at trivial things, such as Connie's messy room, her daughter's hairspray, and how much Connie stares in the mirror, and never discusses serious matters, such as what Connie is doing so much at the shopping mall. Connie clearly does not perceive her mother as an authority figure: "Her mother was so simple, Connie thought, that it was maybe cruel to fool her so much" (Oates 1968). Connie's mother senses her daughter's contempt and tries to use her remote and unavailable husband, who is often away, to 'back her up,' but with little effect, given that he prefers to withdraw rather than participate in the sniping between mother and daughter. Connie also uses June against her daughter as an embodiment of what a good daughter should be, which makes Connie even more contemptuous of the idea of being a 'good daughter.'

According to the advice of an adolescent psychologist: "Parents need to be emotionally authentic. Don't try to act as though you are angry when you're really not" (Osterweil 2005). Connie's mother clearly falls into this trap, and her constant nagging of her daughter about inconsequential matters, while avoiding serious issues such as sexuality, does nothing to help Connie understand what type of a persona she is projecting when she wanders around, flipping her hair, scantily dressed. "Don't try to talk like your kids or their friends. You're an adult, so be an adult" (Osterweil 2005). Connie's mother feels as if she must let her daughter stay out late, and even allows her husband to facilitate this when he takes Connie and her friends to the shopping mall. She things this is correct because her older daughter does so, even though Connie is only fifteen and June is twenty-three.