Using Clues from the Joyce Carol Oates's Canon to Help Read "Wolf's Head Lake"
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: My work on “Wolf’s Head Lake” (originally published in 2000 in Salmagundi 128/129) [Slide 2] is part of a larger project exploring this story as a rewriting of the earlier “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (originally published in 1966 in Epoch 16.1 – and celebrating its 60th anniversary this year!). The stories share several key components, including the young woman protagonist, the function of the screen door as imperfect protective membrane, the evocation of the Big Bad Wolf of fairy tale infamy, a predatory male with a companion in a car, and the presence of automobile trajectories that mirror the plot movements. Might “Wolf’s Head Lake” be considered a darker version of Connie’s fate – a heroine created as a victim, with no possibility of redemption? What comment might Oates be making on US society and culture at the turn of the century? In what ways has Oates’s message evolved in the thirty-four years between the stories?As I do not have time to present the complete project today, I have decided to discuss several different possible readings of the latter work, drawing on clues from other Oates works [Slide 3], to focus on the structural hesitation that Oates builds into the story, providing her readers with multiple possible interpretations of the story which are all supported at once.
Source: HAL
Author: Tromble, Tanya
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7165696161