Name:Yunhong Li
Date:9/17/2019
Exploratory Essay
The Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is about a story of a fifteen years old girl, named Connie. She is rebellious, and a large part of the reason from her family. Her mother’s reproaches and repressions, her sister and father’s indifference that all led to her tragic end.
Some of Connie’s behavior could see that she is different from other peers. In the story, “She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right.” that reveals she very cares about her appearance, and what others think of her. Even her mother always blamed her about it, she also considered it to her mother’s feeling that she was no longer young and beautiful and taking out her frustrations on Connie. But actually, in the Freud’s first Lecture, “It was observed that, while the patient was in her states of ‘absence (altered personality accompanied by confusion), she was in the habit of muttering a few words to herself which seemed as though they arose from some train of thought that was occupying her mind.” This is can be associated with Connie’s behavior because her nervous giggling habit was unconscious, she couldn’t think about other things and restrain them in the meantime. Which means she seems to have the early symptom of the hysteria.
In addition, Connie shows her altered personality in the story, “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 laugh, which was cynical and drawing at home— ‘Ha, ha, very funny,’—but high pitched and nervous anywhere else,” She can easily switch and pretend to be two different looks, that also hide and lost her true self. That expresses Connie’s went insane, she tried to find the way to live and get along with her family perfunctorily, and released, indulged herself outside. This might be caused by the repression of her mother. Connie couldn’t get her mother’s approval, because her sister is such a good, plain and steady girl that her mother like. By contrast, she behaved like a rebellious, bad girl, do nothing all day. So she didn’t want mother to think worse of her, she learned to disguise herself, then that caused a split in her personality.
Besides this, Connie’s mother revealed “Connie couldn’t do a thing, her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams.”, a description of her daydreaming from the story is “getting in her mother’s way and thinking, dreaming about the boys she met. But 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.” This is mentioned in the First Lecture, “They were profoundly melancholy phantasies – ‘day dreams’ we should call them – sometimes characterized by poetic beauty” Thus it can be seen she would unconsciously begin to fantasize about the people and things she has experienced and seen. Connie wanted to escape from real life by phantasy, she felt it was free as she stayed outside. At that time, she was in a state of absence, until her mother dragged her back to real life.
According to “and when she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was, the backyard ran off into weeds and a fence-like line of trees and behind it the sky was perfectly blue and still. The asbestos ranch house that was now three years old startled her—it looked small. She shook her head as if to get awake.” this portends Connie fell into a deeper phantasy and she couldn’t get out, and that explains Arnold Friend who wants to take Connie away from home can simply sway and control Connie’s mind. Just like Freud said “The doctor, after getting a report of these words, used to put her into a kind of hypnosis and then repeat them to her so as to induce her to use them as a starting point.” the doctor hypnotized the patient to induce her fantasize again and to eliminate it in the First Lecture. But the difference is that Arnold Friend uses this way to control Connie’s mind, and Connie’s will become week, can’t resist it.
