Overcoming Daddy: The Daughter’s Rite of Passage in Joyce Carol Oates’ Late Novels

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay considers three unexplored late novels by Joyce Carol Oates, namely, Man Crazy, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, and Little Bird of Heaven which powerfully represent negative father complex through fictional daughters who struggle to escape the shadow of their overbearing daddies. It examines how the daughters – Ingrid, Rebecca, and Krista – hailing from disenfranchised backgrounds and broken families endure traumatic circumstances as a result of their father fixation and often develop self-effacing and masochistic tendencies. Further, it analyses how the atrophied psyche of these daughters upon losing the father compels them to go searching for surrogate daddies and predictably invite catastrophic outcomes. It then turns its focus on how by reconnecting with their hitherto unavailable mothers, Oates’ daughters undergo an integral female rite of passage to eventually overcome their psychological conditioning and attain independence and self-actualization. By drawing upon Jungian theories and feminist psychoanalysis, this essay therefore treats negative father complex as a disturbing yet necessary element in Oates’ novels, especially her underrated late novels. Finally, this essay argues that by overcoming their daddies Oates’ fictional daughters not only conquer their psychological demons but also attest to the author’s liberal feminist sensibility by moving from chaos to clarity.