ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Joyce Carol Oates’ treatment of aging and spiritual maturation in the novel Foxfire and the frequently anthologized short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” In these coming-of-age stories, the young girls’ search to be empowered by the image of God is displaced onto other women since God does not exist. God is conspicuously absent, and women cannot be reflected in him or any other divine source. Rather than fostering healthy relationships with older women role models, displacing the need to reflect the divine onto other women results in unrealistic body image expectations and unhealthy competition among different generations of women. The desire to image another begets absurdity, corruption, and perversion as manifested in broken relationships between different generations of women and the desire for power over others. Oates demonstrates this position through a host of dysfunctional aging mother/young daughter duos and failed encounters with a divine power. In Oates’ spiritual vision, all ages of women are spiritual orphans and that is not a bad thing; women are most powerful when they locate world-changing power internally rather than seeking external validation.
