When Arnold Friend makes those desires explicit, Connie is shocked and terrified by the obscenity of his plans. Her sexual desires are expressed through a thoroughly naïve, romantic yearning. Her daydreams, though “trashy,” are sweet and simple (1). Oates describes Connie’s attraction to love as the dreamy state “promised” by popular culture, illustrating her innocence.
The whole situation makes her vulnerable to outside predators like Arnold Friend, who can exploit her dissatisfaction and yearning for something different.Ĭonnie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs and when she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was, the back yard ran off into weeds and a fence-like line of trees and behind it the sky looked perfectly blue and still. Connie wishes for death to end her toxic family dynamic. Neither parent is present or mature enough to be constructively involved in their daughter’s life neither asks her where she is going or where she has been.
Her father is completely uninterested in his wife and daughters and her mother’s sexual jealousy is palpable. Oates illustrates the deep dysfunction that marks Connie’s family, which should shield her from dangers. He didn’t bother talking much to them, but around his bent head Connie’s mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over. A typical teenager, Connie’s ideas about the importance of beauty are a reflection of the culture she operates in, where mothers prefer their prettier daughters and social hierarchies are built around looks. Connie’s vanity contributes to her downfall: flattered by the attention of an older man, she allows him to lure her into a conversation that proves to be her undoing. Even when an unknown car pulls into her driveway, her first reaction is not to lock the doors, but to fix her hair. She draws criticism from her mother for constantly checking her reflection in mirrors. Much of Connie’s identity and the core of her self-confidence are centered on her physical beauty. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything.
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