Victim Precipitation in Oates's "Assault"

Denise Noe

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Feb 13, 2015, 11:07:15 PM2/13/15

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Often in the fiction of Joyce Carol Oates, sex crime victims appear to "ask for it." This theme of victim precipitation is most dramatically developed, IMO, in the short story entitled "Assault" that is the second to last story featured in her collection "The Goddess and Other Women." At 14 years of age, Charlotte Pecora is on her way home when she pauses for "no reason" and "waits" for the car to pull up alongside her as "if she had summoned it to her." She is raped and beaten so badly her jaw is broken in the process. Later, she is depicted as romanticizing this brutality in her mind.

Do other readers find "Assault" a troubling story?

What do you make of the way Charlotte appears to "summon" her rapist?

Adva Weinerman

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Feb 14, 2015, 6:22:33 AM2/14/15

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In reply to your question or wondering about the Assault story: usually authors write about what happened without giving the psychological explanations of the characters. In this case, whether Oates is aware of the psychological mechanism of such behavior or not, such behavior is not rare at all. people do behave in ways that will bring about in real time and in reality what they fear the most, because only then an extreme tension that has been built up for years sometimes, is being resolved. The price of course is horrendous sometimes.

Maybe this can be of a little help. Anyways, Oates writes a lot about aggression and this is a repeated them with her all along her writing.

Adva

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Denise Noe

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Feb 14, 2015, 9:58:38 AM2/14/15

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Thanks for your input, Adva. Have you read "Assault"? Part of what makes the story so troubling is that the young girl doesn't "tease" the rapist and batterer but just seems to draw him to her by a telepathic force.

Michaelangelo Rodriguez

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Feb 14, 2015, 12:09:46 PM2/14/15

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Good question.

Denise Noe

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Feb 14, 2015, 12:15:11 PM2/14/15

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Another problem is that, in an essay for Time magazine about the Mike Tyson rape case, Oates condemned as "outrageous" the idea that rape victims precipitate such crimes. In an essay, she condemns William Faulkner for his "dismissal of the possibility of rape" as "vicious and even demented thinking which, if followed to a logical conclusion, would indict the victim as the cause of the crime." These statements are ironic in view of how rape is depicted in "Assault."

On Saturday, February 14, 2015 at 12:09:46 PM UTC-5, Michaelangelo wrote:

Good question.

On Saturday, February 14, 2015, Adva Weinerman <adva...@netvision.net.il> wrote:

In reply to your question or wondering about the Assault story: usually authors write about what happened without giving the psychological explanations of the characters. In this case, whether Oates is aware of the psychological mechanism of such behavior or not, such behavior is not rare at all. people do behave in ways that will bring about in real time and in reality what they fear the most, because only then an extreme tension that has been built up for years sometimes, is being resolved. The price of course is horrendous sometimes.

Maybe this can be of a little help. Anyways, Oates writes a lot about aggression and this is a repeated them with her all along her writing.

Adva

From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [mailto:toneclusters@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2015 6:07 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [JCO:1162] Victim Precipitation in Oates's "Assault"

Often in the fiction of Joyce Carol Oates, sex crime victims appear to "ask for it." This theme of victim precipitation is most dramatically developed, IMO, in the short story entitled "Assault" that is the second to last story featured in her collection "The Goddess and Other Women." At 14 years of age, Charlotte Pecora is on her way home when she pauses for "no reason" and "waits" for the car to pull up alongside her as "if she had summoned it to her." She is raped and beaten so badly her jaw is broken in the process. Later, she is depicted as romanticizing this brutality in her mind.

Do other readers find "Assault" a troubling story?

What do you make of the way Charlotte appears to "summon" her rapist?

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Adva Weinerman

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Feb 14, 2015, 12:17:48 PM2/14/15

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No, I haven't had the chance of reading Assault, can you be specific and tell me the name of the book so I can order it?

Oates valiantly touches upon topics that are hard to digest, evil and aggression, and does it unlike other authors, especially women authors in a wholly different manner.

Anyhow, many people bring about based on early experiences and trouble the very same thing they are so afraid of. Once they do, either they can restart, or they are doomed. That explains in part why there is so much misery in the world, or a perpetuation of misery.

Denise Noe

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Feb 14, 2015, 1:59:41 PM2/14/15

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It is in the collection "The Goddess and Other Women" and is the second to last story.

Adva Weinerman

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Feb 14, 2015, 4:18:16 PM2/14/15

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Thanks for the book's name.

בברכה, אדוה

Adva Weinerman

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Feb 14, 2015, 5:17:02 PM2/14/15

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Thanks for enlightening us about this friction in her thought and sentiments. For me it goes to show for the umpteenth time that clarity of thinking is not always found in authors or other artists. Psychologically it hints at a confusion that is in her soul and psyche regarding aggression, and as I mentioned and you all know as her readers, that it is a very main topic in her literature, something that stems from her very soul and psyche and activates her work, but has not reached clarity and might still torment her.

בברכה, אדוה

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Subject: Re: [JCO:1167] Victim Precipitation in Oates's "Assault"

Another problem is that, in an essay for Time magazine about the Mike Tyson rape case, Oates condemned as "outrageous" the idea that rape victims precipitate such crimes. In an essay, she condemns William Faulkner for his "dismissal of the possibility of rape" as "vicious and even demented thinking which, if followed to a logical conclusion, would indict the victim as the cause of the crime." These statements are ironic in view of how rape is depicted in "Assault."

On Saturday, February 14, 2015 at 12:09:46 PM UTC-5, Michaelangelo wrote:

Good question.

On Saturday, February 14, 2015, Adva Weinerman <adva...@netvision.net.il> wrote:

In reply to your question or wondering about the Assault story: usually authors write about what happened without giving the psychological explanations of the characters. In this case, whether Oates is aware of the psychological mechanism of such behavior or not, such behavior is not rare at all. people do behave in ways that will bring about in real time and in reality what they fear the most, because only then an extreme tension that has been built up for years sometimes, is being resolved. The price of course is horrendous sometimes.

Maybe this can be of a little help. Anyways, Oates writes a lot about aggression and this is a repeated them with her all along her writing.

Adva

From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2015 6:07 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [JCO:1162] Victim Precipitation in Oates's "Assault"

Often in the fiction of Joyce Carol Oates, sex crime victims appear to "ask for it." This theme of victim precipitation is most dramatically developed, IMO, in the short story entitled "Assault" that is the second to last story featured in her collection "The Goddess and Other Women." At 14 years of age, Charlotte Pecora is on her way home when she pauses for "no reason" and "waits" for the car to pull up alongside her as "if she had summoned it to her." She is raped and beaten so badly her jaw is broken in the process. Later, she is depicted as romanticizing this brutality in her mind.

Do other readers find "Assault" a troubling story?

What do you make of the way Charlotte appears to "summon" her rapist?

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Brenda Daly

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Feb 14, 2015, 6:51:27 PM2/14/15

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I have just read the short story, "Assault," and I believe that Charlotte is waiting, not for a rapist, but for he r father, a man who always walked away rather than engaging emotionally with his wife or daughter. Even after Charlotte was hurt--she was assaulted but not raped--her father walked away. He was a a scientist--detached, neutral, incapable of expressing love--even as a father. Charlotte returns, despite her painful memories, because she had learned that her father had given her the house, a possible expression of love. Charlotte is, bravely, looking for love, returning to a traumatic past/place, searching love, not rape.

The story must be read carefully because it shifts from past to present almost seamlessly, as our minds often do. I do NOT see victim precipitation in this story. It has grat psychological depth, disclosing a frightened woman who is courageously seeking the love of an emotionally absent father.

Brenda Daly

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Ellen Friedman

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Feb 14, 2015, 7:46:48 PM2/14/15

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Well done, BRENDA.

Sent from my iPhone

Brenda Daly

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Feb 14, 2015, 8:29:19 PM2/14/15

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I would add that Charlotte's memory of the attack suggests fear. She's only 14 when it happens. Darkness sets in more swiftly than she had anticipated. She's frightened and then almost frozen with fear. Following this attack, her father is uncharacteristically angry, blaming the mother. This memory stays with Charlotte because it hints at unexpressed love. She's hungry for her father's love, but has found it difficult to admit. Her emotionally absent father left a deeper, albeit invisible, scar than the scar on her face.

I don't understand how anyone would conclude that Oates frequently blames the victim. Please name the stories where you find this as I would like to read them again.

Brenda Daly
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Brenda Daly

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Feb 14, 2015, 8:34:18 PM2/14/15

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Adva,,in my view the confusion is in the mind of the character whereas Oates is quite clear in her portrayal of an emotionally confused woman. Likewise, Charlotte is tormented by her hunger for a father's love, but Oates is not Charlotte. Rather, I would say that Oates is bearing witness, with sympathy, to a wounded woman's efforts to heal herself.

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Brenda Daly

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Feb 14, 2015, 8:37:40 PM2/14/15

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Thanks, Ellen.

Brenda

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On Feb 14, 2015, at 6:29 PM, Ellen Friedman <frie...@tcnj.edu> wrote:

Michaelangelo Rodriguez

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Feb 14, 2015, 9:24:55 PM2/14/15

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I know JCO personally and studied with her. I'll have to read Assault. I know a lot of her fiction runs on these themes.

Adva Weinerman

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Feb 15, 2015, 4:38:15 AM2/15/15

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I will bear in mind your comment when reading the story Brenda, thanks.

Adva

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Adva Weinerman

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Feb 15, 2015, 4:42:28 AM2/15/15

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Brenda thanks. I have not yet read the book or the story which I hope to do soon. I was merely addressing the way some people do "invite" deep in their psychological recesses "punishment". I was also addressing the previous suppositions. And yes, I think we all are being tormented by our need for a parent's love when it is not offered during childhood. That is very common too I am afraid. In stories and books, things get always dramatized and pushed together to create a stronger sensation for the reader.

Adva

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Denise Noe

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Feb 15, 2015, 4:56:25 AM2/15/15

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Au contraire. When Charlotte is 14, she IS raped. The rapist comes to her "stinking of whisky and vomit" and he rapes her, beats her, and bashes her head so hard her jaw is broken.

Denise Noe

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Feb 15, 2015, 7:19:34 AM2/15/15

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It DOES suggest fear but also that she has "summoned" -- Oates's word -- the rapist and beater to her. In flashback, she thinks that the rape and beating is "necessary despite the panic."

Denise Noe

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Feb 15, 2015, 7:20:28 AM2/15/15

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I have an essay online entitled: "From Masochistic Provocation to Violent Retaliation: The Rape Victim in Joyce Carol Oates."

On Saturday, February 14, 2015 at 8:29:19 PM UTC-5, Brenda Daly wrote:

Denise Noe

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Feb 15, 2015, 8:30:38 AM2/15/15

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When you read "Assault," I'll be very interested in your take on it.

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Marie Kabala-Rejment

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Feb 15, 2015, 11:50:29 AM2/15/15

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I would like to suggest that in "Rape - A Love Story", Oates devotes a lot of space to the community perspective, which is exactly of the type "she had it coming..." On the other hand, I believe she makes it perfectly clear that this is not the perspective that she shares but rather one that signifies how unfairly rape victims are treated by society. All of this is very much in line with her statements in Time magazine, to which you referred, Denise.

I have not read Assault - could it be so different?

Best,

Marie

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Denise Noe

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Feb 15, 2015, 12:10:18 PM2/15/15

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Hi, Marie. "Assault" is VERY different in its depiction of rape as victim precipitated.

I know that Oates certainly CAN write of rape without suggesting victim precipitation since she does so in "Son of the Morning." But "Assault" definitely suggests that Charlotte draws a particular brutal rapist to her.

bd...@frontiernet.net

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Feb 15, 2015, 5:38:00 PM2/15/15

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Ms. Noe:

I do not accept the argument that Joyce Carol Oates is blaming a 14-year-old girl for her own assault. I will say again, and for the final time, that it is important to read the story carefully and avoid conflating her characters' inner thoughts with those of the authorial narrator. Because Oates often used indirect discourse, not signaling a shift to a character's inner voice, it is sometimes confusing. Since you cite the word "summoning," let's look carefully at the context in which this word appears.

The word "summoning" appears for the first time in the story, "Assault" in this sentence: “She could not have been more transfixed had she called the car to her, summoning it onto this dark side road, away from the illuminated highway” (451). Like a deer in a car's headlights, she is "transfixed," as if (italics and words mine here) she "had called the car to her, summoning it onto this dark side road." In fact, however, she's a young girl who, like most girls, does not possess telepathic powers--at least not in a psychologically realistic story like this one. The bus has dropped her off on a highway a half mile from her home. She thinks, “It was dark for eight-thirty; her watch must have stopped” (450). It is fall, mid-October, a season when darkness comes on more quickly. In other words, Charlotte is young, and she hasn't anticipated how dark it would be when she would be walking home, and her mother had not gone to meet her, which is why her father had been angry.

To return to the assault: After a car brakes to a stop, Charlotte remembers that she fell, was dragged by the arm, her head slammed against the ground. Then someone grabs the assailant just as "her soul had contracted to the size of a pin" (452). The title of the story is "Assault," and it isn't clear from the description--years after the traumatic event-- that a rape has occurred. Memory is notoriously unreliable, and traumatic memory is an especially complicated issue.

Significantly, Charlotte does not return to the highway, the scene of the assault, but to her old home where, when darkness comes, "She lay back to wait. In the morning she would leave, but tonight she would summon him back"(454). Who is the "him" in this passage? In her memories, she seems to conflate the faceless man who assaulted her with her father, both of whom have caused her intense pain, physical and emotional. She thinks, "Faceless and not white, not black. O love, it was fists and knees mainly, and another fist of flesh that entered her blundering, painful, without personality" (455).

I don't have time for any further discussion, but thank you for raising a significant moral and literary question about the fiction of Joyce Carol Oates.

Brenda Daly

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Denise Noe

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Feb 16, 2015, 10:45:39 AM2/16/15

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It seems to me that the story may not be "realistic" but fall into the category that Oates has called the "realistic allegory." Much is presented in detail realistically but it shades into a kind of parable.

Brenda Daly

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Feb 16, 2015, 6:23:12 PM2/16/15

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???????

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Adva Weinerman

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Feb 16, 2015, 7:26:54 PM2/16/15

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A very meaningful discussion.

Brenda, thanks for the time and effort you took in order to deepen the discussion.

Adva

Denise Noe

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Feb 16, 2015, 9:03:32 PM2/16/15

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Oates has stated that her most famous short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a "realistic allegory."

Gordon Pryce

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Feb 27, 2015, 4:21:35 PM2/27/15

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The interesting dialogue continues in this group. That was a particularly intriguing analysis by Ms. Brenda Daly.

Forgive me if I have already done so (years ago), but I would like to suggest "Smooth Talk", for a cinematic theatrical spin on Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVAfOYFgEWU

~Gordon

Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2015 18:03:32 -0800
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [JCO:1190] Victim Precipitation in Oates's "Assault"

Max Alberts

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Feb 27, 2015, 4:43:17 PM2/27/15

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Hello, everyone!

At the risk of adding my ingredients to an already over-spiced soup, it seems to me that much of Oates's short fiction deals with people whose lives--both consciously and unconsciously--are in a mess and whose motives are frequently unclear or even flat out contradictory, inchoate and disturbed. The explosiveness of many of her stories is derived precisely from such contradictions. Oates's characters rush wildly to their own destruction. Draw your own conclusions.

MAX

Michaelangelo Rodriguez

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Feb 27, 2015, 10:41:21 PM2/27/15

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That's right, Max

On Friday, February 27, 2015, 'Max Alberts' via Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group <tonecl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hello, everyone!

At the risk of adding my ingredients to an already over-spiced soup, it seems to me that much of Oates's short fiction deals with people whose lives--both consciously and unconsciously--are in a mess and whose motives are frequently unclear or even flat out contradictory, inchoate and disturbed. The explosiveness of many of her stories is derived precisely from such contradictions. Oates's characters rush wildly to their own destruction. Draw your own conclusions.

MAX

On Friday, February 27, 2015 3:21 PM, Gordon Pryce <g.p...@hotmail.com> wrote:

The interesting dialogue continues in this group. That was a particularly intriguing analysis by Ms. Brenda Daly.

Forgive me if I have already done so (years ago), but I would like to suggest "Smooth Talk", for a cinematic theatrical spin on Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been:

Smooth Talk 1986 Trailer

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