The representation of female violence in Joyce Carol Oates's later fiction.

Abstract

The representation of female violence in Joyce Carol Oates's later fiction is an undertaking that involves three methods of reading Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, and Man Crazy. The first chapter is a Freudian interpretation of both the novels and the characters and how the female castration complex is the cause for female violence in all three works; the second chapter illustrates the effects of female violence from the perspective of race, gender, and body; and the third chapter discusses "real" and "fictionalized" violence as coping mechanisms for female oppression in the patriarchy. The goal of the thesis is to demonstrate the impact of male domination and female subordination of women in the patriarchy and how women learn to exist in a society founded on female oppression.