Critical interpretation has never been a strong point of mine with regards to literature, though I appreciate its utility I am often just looking to \u201cenjoy a finely crafted story.\u201d \u00a0However, when scouring the critical interpretations presented in Korb\u2019s article the idea of \u201cWhere Are You Going, Where Have You Been\u201d as an inverted fairy tale had particular resonance.<\/p>\n
My initial readthrough of the story would not have picked up on this idea, so I read it again.\u00a0 To my unending surprise it possessed a lot of the hallmarks of a fairy tale we should all be familiar with-Cinderella.\u00a0 Whereas Cinderella hoped to be rescued from the grasp of her wicked stepmother and stepsisters by Prince Charming, Connie looks to escape the moribund nature of her home life and the oppression of her mother and her \u201cboring sister.\u201d\u00a0 Connie\u2019s mother envies her youth and good looks and favors her sister June just as the evil stepmother favored the stepdaughters in Cinderella.\u00a0 The difference being that Connie seems to be a splitting of the roles from Cinderella-she physically inhabits the role of Cinderella but seems to have co-opted the mean-spirited nature of the wicked stepsisters.\u00a0 She resents her mother\u2019s favoritism of June because, \u201cshe was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time by her mother and her mother\u2019s sisters.\u00a0 June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn\u2019t do a thing, her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams\u201d (Oates).\u00a0 So, June fulfills a lot of the physical role occupied by Cinderella as the oppressed stepdaughter but possesses none of the malice.\u00a0 This inversion continues with the subversion of the role of Prince Charming in the form of Arnold Friend.\u00a0 As Korb notes, \u201cConnie is joined not with Prince Charming but with the Prince of Darkness\u201d (Korb 1). \u00a0\u00a0She initially encounters him at the drive thru in what any fairy tale would characterize as the love at first sight meeting.\u00a0 However, in this instance their meeting is instilled with a particular sense of horror, \u201cHe stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin.\u00a0 Connie slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn\u2019t help glancing back and there he was, still watching her.\u00a0 He wagged a finger and laughed and said, \u201cGonna get you, baby,\u201d and Connie turned away again without Eddie noticing anything\u201d (Oates).\u00a0 More the stuff of a horror movie than your initial encounter with Cinderella\u2019s Prince Charming, thus another example of the inverted fairy tale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Critical interpretation has never been a strong point of mine with regards to literature, though I appreciate its utility I am often just looking to \u201cenjoy a finely crafted story.\u201d \u00a0However, when scouring the critical interpretations presented in Korb\u2019s article the idea of \u201cWhere Are You Going, Where Have You Been\u201d as an inverted fairy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-week-05-discussion","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9193,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9192\/revisions\/9193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/eng-201-introduction-to-literature-fall-7w1-conway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}