THE TRANSGRESSIVE OTHER OF OATES,JOYCE,CAROL RECENT FICTION

According to Tony Tanner, “Very often the novel writes of contracts but dreams of transgressions” (386), a paradoxical statement well illustrated in the fiction of Joyce Carol Oates. Although Oates has been thought of primarily as a realist, even a moralist,1 her work may often be understood with respect to its dialectic with the text, its superimposition of a narrative leveled against the text itself to decenter the social codes through which it is organized. This radical contradiction is regularly mounted by the intriguing and anti-social character that I designate as the transgressive other, who is defined by a narrative position in contrapuntal relation to domestic norms and standards of communicability within which the text is located. The most famous example of this “transgressive other” is Arnold Friend in Oates's frequently anthologized short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”2 but other such figures are a recurrent device throughout her career and a dominant feature in her most recent novels. © 1992 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.