Where is Connie Going?

            Oates’ Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? appeared to me as a critique of modern society and the result of industrialization with the purpose of pointing out flaws in modern parenting tendencies. As a result of technological advancement and the rise of an urban lifestyle in America, the obligations of children have evolved so that, unlike children of past generations, the only real obligations children in the present have are to attend school. For instance, children were typically relied on heavily for labor during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, working in coal mines, textile mills and family farms to bring in much needed money and food for their families. Moreover, children of past generations became apprentices in order to continue the family business with an informal, but specialized, education and stay close to their families. However, since most children now only feel the obligation to attend school and possibly go to college, many have shattered the old ideology of maintaining the family business by moving far away from home or by becoming fiercely individualized. Oates represents this by demonstrating the dysfunctional nature of Connie’s family, starting with a mother who constantly scolds 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” (Oates 1). The insignificant topic of the successive questions that Connie’s mother asks indicates that Connie neither listens to nor cares about what her mother is saying, which clearly demonstrates a failure in parental discipline and a lack of mother-daughter connection within the family. Furthermore, Connie’s father also fails to maintain discipline since her, “father was away at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed” (Oates 1). Since Connie’s family becomes more dysfunctional, her parents become more lenient with what Connie does as Connie lacks the self-restraint to control herself until the Sunday Arnold Friend arrives at her house. On that Sunday, “Connie got up at eleven—none of them bothered with church—and washed her hair so that it could dry all day long in the sun” (Oates 2). The fact that her family does not go to church is significant because it demonstrates that she does not conform to the Protestant work ethic, which largely entails that idleness will allow the devil into Connie’s life. Oates then uses Arnold Friend to represent the devil and the consequences for Connie’s idleness in order to demonstrate the failure of modern society to teach its children despite surrounding them with teachers for eight hours a day and five days a week. Gretchen Schulz and R. J. R. Rockwood make an argument similar to mine by establishing a connection between the situations and morals of common fairy tales and the situations in Oates’ story.

Although Schulz and Rockwood make a compelling connection between fairy tales and the events in Joyce Carol Oates’ Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? in their essay In Fairyland, without a Map, their argument that fairy tales would be substantially beneficial to Connie and children of her generation is flawed. First, the connection between fairy tales and Oates’ Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? is very strong. On top of all the parallels in the events and ideologies of Oates’s story and the fairy tales, it is very likely that Oates dedicated Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? to Bob Dylan because he is a folk singer. Schulz and Rockwood note the connection between Oates and folk fantasy by observing that in her story, “Again and again she presents characters and situations which parallel corresponding motifs from the world of folk fantasy. And never is this more true than in [Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?]” (Schulz & Rockwood 4). Dylan’s song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” tells the story of lovers who have stopped loving each other, at which point Dylan serves as the voice of reason telling each to deal with the situation and move on. Dylan’s call to the lovers to move on and retake control of their lives parallels the common theme of Connie’s dysfunctional family and her lack of control over her future. However, Schulz and Rockwood attempt to extend their conclusion about fairy tales by claiming that, “the help provided by fairy tales proper is such that a child can learn to compensate even when adult society makes errors of the gravest sort, capping with a happy ending a situation which might otherwise prove tragic for the child” (Schulz & Rockwood 6). There are a few problems with this argument starting with the fact that the only real evidence that Schulz and Rockwood have to substantiate this claim is that, “Bruno Bettelheim argues that children’s fairy tales offer ‘symbolic images’ that suggest ‘happy solutions’ to the problems of adolescence” (Schulz & Rockwood 4). Although it helps to establish agreement between authors, this evidence is inadequate because it does not develop the credibility of Bruno Bettelheim and it inadequately covers the psychological claim that Schulz and Rockwood make. A claim that relies heavily on establishing the universal effectiveness of fairy tales in solving common social problems needs to be substantiated with evidence that contains more universal or standardized conclusions, such as a statistic cataloging the responses of children who have and have not been told fairy tales to similar societal problems. Furthermore, I would think that fairy tales would actually have very little to no effect on children’s responses to social problems because little attention would be paid to the details or moral of the story due to the relatively little experience children have to relate back to the story. Since most children lack the life experience prior to hearing a fairy tale, the story will largely be meaningless because each moral will only be able to be related to the corresponding, specific events the main character underwent, which would make the probability of unconscious recall of that specific scenario infinitesimal. Moreover, personal attitudes, habits, and beliefs are typically created by repeated experiences that can be made to interrelate with their perceived consequences; therefore, each fairy tale will most likely be swamped by multitudes of tangential social experiences that hold more weight due to their consequences. Ultimately, although it was interesting to read a psychological evaluation of a fictional character, there is almost always too little information contained within a fiction novel (or any novel for that matter) to accurately evaluate the psychological implications of fictional events.

Works Cited

Oates, Joyce Carol. "Where are you going, where have you been?" New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Print.

Gretchen Schulz and R. J. R. Rockwood (1980). In Fairyland, Without a Map: Connie’s Exploration Inward in Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’. Literature and Psychology, Print.