What Is the Connection Between Men and Women? by Joyce Carol Oates
The topic explores the complex and often fraught connection between men and women, particularly through the lens of guilt and sexual repression. In the narrative, a female character named Sharon grapples with her tumultuous emotions, reflecting on her past relationships and her current psychological instability following the death of her husband. The story juxtaposes clinical, male-oriented questions with the disjointed and vulnerable responses of Sharon, highlighting the discord between male and female perspectives on intimacy and trauma. As she confronts memories of loss and encounters with strangers, her fear and longing intertwine, revealing her deep-seated struggles with identity and connection. The narrative culminates in a moment of tension when Sharon faces the possibility of an unexpected visitor, representing both a threat and a chance for emotional engagement. Ultimately, the exploration of this dynamic between men and women invites readers to consider themes of vulnerability, desire, and the impact of loss on personal relationships.
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What Is the Connection Between Men and Women? by Joyce Carol Oates
First published: 1970
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: The 1960's
Locale: The United States
Principal Characters:
Sharon , a widow, thirty-four years old, who works in a department storeHer husband , now dead, whom she remembersA man , unnamed, who follows her home
The Story
Joyce Carol Oates's story is an experimental rendering of guilt and sexual repression. Through an alternation between a series of questions (in italics) and answers (in roman), she exposes the rawness of a very vulnerable personality: a woman unable to understand her own desires and fears. The reader's burdensome task is to understand this neurosis, even if the central character never will. The rather curt, at times clinical, questions seem to come from a male universe; the irrational, at times utterly disjointed answers seem to emanate from the female narrator's defense of another woman—a woman as broken as she is. The title of the story (also one of its questions) seems to support this reading.
Sharon, this miserably unhappy woman, spends a sleepless night vaguely waiting for something or someone to happen to her. She brings into her memory a young boy from her high school days who "had died of insanity." She thinks of her mother, miles away, whose snoring disgusts her; throughout the story her mother appears as a bittersweet but inaccessibly distant memory. In the middle of these scattered reminiscences, the reader is uncomfortably aware that Sharon is terrified by the possibility that the telephone will ring.
She then recalls an unspecified afternoon before this sleepless night. She had met an old friend of her father-in-law. He reminds her of all the dead men in her life: father-in-law, father, husband, and the insane high school boy. She successfully shakes him off. A stranger confronts her; he expresses concern that the old man was harassing her. Something about this man stuns her. She begins to confuse this man with her husband—reminding herself that he could not be her husband, yet considering that perhaps the stranger is a survivor of the automobile accident in which her husband had died. It becomes clear that the psychological stability of this woman is, to say the least, tentative.
She continues on her way home, stopping at a grocer's, obsessed with the stranger. The man has followed her to the store; she is oddly terrified by the coincidence. She is frightened by, yet attracted to, the stranger.
Periodically she recalls her life with her husband, his death, and her meager survival. Since her husband's death, the world has become desexualized, dehumanized: "a world of bodies, directed clumsily by thoughts, by darting minnowlike ideas." Periodically the reader returns to her sleepless night; it seems that much of this woman has died with her husband.
At 4:30 in the morning, the telephone rings—as she had feared. She is certain that the stranger followed her home that afternoon. She answers; after a breathy hesitation, the voice asks: "Hello, is this Sharon?" He identifies himself as "someone you just met." Hysterical, she slams down the telephone receiver.
She spends another restless night and early morning in anticipation. The telephone rings at five o'clock; she does not answer. There is a knock at the door; the man calls her by name. In a turmoil of emotional contradictions she opens the door, "and everything comes open, comes apart." With these words the story ends.
Bibliography
Bender, Eileen Teper. Joyce Carol Oates: Artist in Residence. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Cologne-Brookes, Gavin. Dark Eyes on America: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
Creighton, Joanne V. Joyce Carol Oates: Novels of the Middle Years. New York: Twayne, 1992.
Daly, Brenda O. Lavish Self-Divisions: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
Johnson, Greg. Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Dutton, 1998.
Johnson, Greg. Understanding Joyce Carol Oates. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987.
Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979.