Sexuality In Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Human sexuality has a profound impact on our society; more importantly, everyone regardless of gender, ethnicity, or age has a role in human sexuality. It can be as simple as when a woman flaunts her chest and smiles seductively at a police officer to get out of a speeding ticket. Men can even manipulate their sexuality by pretending to share the same interests as a female to benefit his efforts of being with her. Human sexuality even defines what attributes are desired and considered attractive. For example, when Jennifer Lopez, a famous actress, debuted her voluptuous curves every man and woman considered her amble bottom to be the epiphany of today’s sexual desires. Human sexuality can benefit the person using their sexuality to gain
control or it can lead to dangerous situations; Joyce Carol Oates illustrates the dangers of sexuality in her short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Her story demonstrates how sexuality is used for manipulation and how sexuality is used for attention.

To further, understand Oates’ illustration of sexuality, it is important to share a synopsis of her short story.
In, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Joyce Carol Oates shares a story about a fifteen-year-old girl named Connie who encounters Arnold Friend, a predator whose first words to Connie are, “Gonna get you, baby” (Oates). One day, while Connie is home alone, she receives an unexpected visitor from the mysterious boy she saw the other night while hanging out with friends. The mysterious boy introduces himself as Arnold Friend and tries to persuade Connie to take a ride with him by bragging about his car’s new paint job and enticing Connie to view more paintings found conveniently on the opposite door. As Arnold continues his coversation with Connie she “could see that he wasn’t a kid, he was much older-thirty, maybe more” (Oates) and Arnold begins to aggresively persuade Connie to take a ride with him in his car. After Arnold threatens Connie and her family, she has no choice but to “put out her hand against the screen” (Oates) and watch “herself push the door slowly open” (Oates) and leave with
Arnold.

One theme related to sexuality that Oates explores is how Arnold uses his sexuality to manipulate Connie.
When Arnold pays an unexpectant visit to Connie, she first notices his car and his “shaggy, shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig” (Oates). Arnold knows that a car is a fifteen-year-old girl’s pinnacle view of attractive and desirable, so he attempts to lure Connie with his car. He first starts by carefuly displaying his car door, which has Arnold Friend written in “tarlike black letters on the side” (Oates). Secondly, Arnold tries to engage Connie’s curiousity by reading “off the numbers 33, 19, 17” (Oates) and raises “his eyebrows at her to see what she thought of that” (Oates). Next, Arnold is knowledgeable of what attire is attractive to girls so he wears “tight faded jeans stuffed into black, scuffed boots, a belt that pulled his waist in and showed how lean he was, and a white pull-over that was a little soiled and showed the hard small muscles of his arms and shoulders” (Oates). As an older man, Arnold knows he has a good chance of luring Connie to take a ride with him because he has used his car and clothes to show Connie how attractive he is, similar to how a peacock displays his feathers. One more manipulation Arnold uses is his use of body language. When he first sees Connie at the restaurant he stares “at her and then his lips widened into a grin” (Oates) and “wagged a finger” (Oates) in her direction. Arnold uses this bold gesture to assure Connie
that she has his full attention, which Connie fully enjoys because “she couldn’t help glancing back.” (Oates).

The second sexuality theme exemplified by Oates is through the chracter Connie. Connie uses her sexuality for attention. Connie uses her sexuality to receive attention from her mother, even if it was negative attention because negative attention is better than no attention. She knows that her mother “had been pretty once too” (Oates) and “now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.” Secondly, Connie is constantly preoccupied with her appearance and has a habit “of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (Oates). Like Arnold, she uses clothes to show how attractive she is to the opposite sex. “She wore a pull-over jersey blouse” (Oates) and pulled part of her dark blood hair “on her head and puffed out and the rest of it she let fall down her back” (Oates). Connie’s look was successful in showing off her sexuality to the opposite sex because she was able to have a dinner date with a boy named Eddie. Lastly, when Arnold’s car pulls in front of her house, starts to wonder about her looks and quickly primps herself for a visitor she was not expecting let alone a visitor that she knew personally. Once she meets Arnold outside she starts with a nonchalant attitude, “careful not to show no interest or pleasure” (Oates), which is her way of gaining sexual dominance. Connie further shows her sexual dominance by smirking and letting “her hair fall loose over one shoulder” (Oates) as Arnold asks, “You wanna come for a ride?” (Oates).

We use sexuality for many benefits, one that mainly focuses on establishing our worth. Magazines are constantly exploiting feminane or masculine sexuality and send a dangerous message to our younger generation.Young pre-adolescent girls assume it is acceptable to wear provacative attire while capturing a self-picture to post on their social media account. What young girls fail to realize is that there are actual predators, just like Arnold Friend, who seek an easy prey like Connie. When Joyce Carol Oates wrote, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, she portrayed sexuality in a manner that is often dangerously overlooked, which is displaying a strong sexuality at too young of an age can lead to dangerous encounters.

Works Cited

McMahan, Elizabeth. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Literature and the

Writing Process. 10th ed. Boston: Pearson Longman, 2012. N. pag. Print