Truth about a Girl

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Throughout the story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates, we see the story of a young girl named Connie who makes bad decisions in her life. She has a surplus of self-confidence that gets her in trouble within her life. Connie would do anything to impress boys with her looks and eventually it brought her to impress the wrong one. From this story using the idea of feminist criticism we can see that too much self-confidence can help lead to a false sense of security and lead to male dominance over a person.
Feminist criticism can be defines as a having to deal with stereotypical representation of genders( Feminist Criticism). Within this story we can see stereotypes of women. Connie is a teenage girl who is only concerned with her friends and boy at this point within her life. At the same time she wants as much attention as she can, especially from the boys that she tries to make herself more attractive and appealing. However, going out of her way to make herself appealing to the guys is dangerous because she is still a young girl. She was engulfed in the fact that she thought she was beautiful and it was the only thing she had going for. Her confidence seemed to be based solely off her looks that she did not factor in her reputation or personality. The author even said "She knew she was pretty and that was everything"(Oates, pg. 1408). When a girl is to materialistic it leads to more people to take advantage of them because people think they have no morals.
Connie’s friends and who she surrounded herself around also knew how egotistical she was. Her own mother told her "Stop Gawking at yourself, who are you? You think you are so pretty?"(Oates, pg. 1408) You think as a mother you are supposed to boost ...

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...f Joyce Carol Oates." denittise2008-1. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2013. http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncw/f/denittise2008-1.pdf>
"Literary Theories: A Sampling of Critical Lenses." microsoft_word_-_literary_theories. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2013. http://www.mpsaz.org/rmhs/staff/rkcupryk/aa_jr/files/microsoft_word_-_literary_theories.pdf.
Rodriguez, Jennifer. "Morphing the Gothic: The New Voice of Gothic Literature Among Contemporary Women Writers." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=DlvxYladGBsC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=arnold+friend+male+dominance&source=bl&ots=GCb9QU-tPg&sig=Jw7POx1ajNTiKrFz3QJ-IFm6hF4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_cKOUq76M8misAStnIGYBw&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=arnold%20friend%20male%20dominance&f=false.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been. Making Literature Matter. New York: St. Martin, 2012.

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