Where are you going, Where have you been? A Feminist Allegory
             Biographer Greg Johnson interprets the story "Where are you going, Where have you been?" as a feminist allegory. This critical interpretation is accurate. The story of Connie, an attractive young woman, being enslaved into bondage by an aggressive male figure is a story that many women from all time periods can relate to.
             Joyce Carol Oates's "Where are you going, Where have you been?" was inspired by a real account of manipulation, rape, and murder. The story of Charles Schmid takes place in Tucson, Arizona. He is a twenty-three-year-old who would cruise the local teenage hot spots, pick up young girls, and rape and kill them. The fact that Joyce Carol Oates's story was based on a real event is proof that what happened to Connie is not out of the realm of possibility, in fact it gives the story a common credibility. However, as an allegory this does not mean every woman has been enslaved into bondage. It just replicates the feeling of a woman's spirit being crushed or enslaved under the dominate males in a relationship both sexual and nonsexual.
             "Her characterization as a typical girl reaching sexual maturity suggests that her fate represents that suffered by most young women – unwilling and in secret terror – even
             in America in the 1960s." This quote from Greg Johnson's critical interpretation of Joyce
             Carol Oates's feminist allegory perfectly en captures Oates's connection between Connie and every other girl coming of sexual maturity. Johnson also notes the title of the story "Where are you going, Where have you been?" as in itself an allegory where the word "you" in the title not only refers to the young girl coming of sexual maturity, but also all girls past and present coming of sexual maturity.
             Lastly, Oates's places Connie in a kitchen with nothing but a we
             ...