Re: JCO: We were the Mulvaneys

Dear Rick, Randy and Steve

Thank you for your thoughts, I'm still digesting them. As you say Steve the 'coming of age story' now is more about the possibilty of being raped - something which poor Marianne wouldn't necessarily have been made aware of in the 1970's, when there was not such a consciousness about date rape etc and certainly wouldn't have been talked about by Corinne.

I thought it really interesting that as a sign of how sympathetically Oates had dealt with the rape, on the RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) website the Mulvaneys was in the top 3 novels suggested by 'survivors.'

Rick you said (which I agree with) that a reader can go to great lengths to defend a point of view if they think a writer is politically incorrect - 'even responses by the writer dont help.' Do you know if Oates has specifically responded to Atkins 'Rape as Rite of Passage?'

Julie

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Re: JCO: We were the Mulvaneys

Hi Julie,

The main problem I have with the Atkins article is that she seems to feel that it is insignificant that the woman in "Naked" is not raped. That the attackers are literally pre-adolescent children suggests the pains JCO is taking to indicate that this is not a "sexual" assault. It seems JCO wants to get her protagonist into a particular symbolic situation -- having to travel home naked through the countryside -- but does not want the means of creating this situation -- the attack -- to carry more significance than a random violent act. Atkins argues that what happened to the woman has the same "script" as a rape, and therefore is a rape. The whole article is based on this premise, but I think the premise misreads the story.

Randy

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RE: JCO: We were the Mulvaneys

Julie
I am a peculiar sort of feminist. I am a gay man who began reading women
writers in high school in the 70's because I was already listening to women
songwriters like Mitchell. My sense is that women writers like Oates who
venture into the dangerous waters of depicting rape were, are and always
will be viewed suspiciously by some readers.
(That suspicion may have reached a peak in the late 70's.) It is also my
experience that, when a reader decides a writer is politically incorrect,
that reader can devote ENORMOUS amounts of energy defending that view. Even
responses by the writer don't help.
There are many rapes depicted in the works of Joyce Carol Oates, often with
a concern in the narrative for the irresolvable questions of fate and free
will. I have read dozens of novels by Oates and I have had to experience
the painfulness of reading many of these scenes. Being the sort of
feminist-for-life I am, I still cringe when I read an Oates title like
Rape: A Love Story. But then I read the book.
Oates and Doris Lessing are our most complex thinkers about identity
(female and male) Later generations will see how they were feminists on
the far horizon of our time. Even now, Lessing is being attacked for her
new novel The Cleft by certain readers who feel it is anti-feminist. I read
the book and I disagree. (For a start, it decimates the tale of Adam and
Eve. That smoke over there is Eden burning...)
Which is a long-winded way of saying I think you ought to trust your own
feelings on this. read the cristicisms, weigh their merits, but in the end
listen to your own heart.
Rick

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JCO: We were the Mulvaneys

Hi everyone

This is my first email to the discussion group.

 

I am writing a piece on We were the Mulvaneys and in particular the representation of rape. I have come across an essay by Christine Atkins "'This is What you Deserve' : Rape as Rite of Passage in Joyce Carol Oates's 'Naked' - which seems to me to be a feminist criticism on the portrayal of rape in this particular short story. Atkins criticizes Oates as it aligns itself with 'cultural rape scripts' - which she sees as: 'problematic because they serve to justify and/or deny male sexual aggression toward women through the perpetuation of false beliefs about rape. They suggest that rape is inevitable, that women like, desire, or deserve rape, and construct women as always already victims or victimized.'

She accuses 'women writers such as Oates' of not challenging rape scripts but instead making rape part of the 'modern female coming-of-age story.'

 

Has anyone seen this particular article or any responses to it or have any comments on to what extent the Mulvaneys might be seen as 'problematic' in the Atkins sense? Julie W

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