As a young woman, in the 1900’s, it was destined that you were to get married and have a family. You were to be defined by your husband and uphold a decent image of yourself. Now days, marriage is not for everyone; there are women who are successful, whilst being single. In the short story “Naked,” by Joyce Carol Oates, an extremely prolific writer and American novelist, she takes us through a journey of a woman who is currently married, but by an unfortunate event, comes to the realization that marriage is not for her.
Her journey starts while hiking alone in the wildlife preserve. The main character was attacked by a pack of wild, savage children, “the children swarmed over her, pummeling her with their fists, pounding, kicking, tearing […]” (Oates 124). The children swarmed around her like bees ready for the attack. They beat her, stripped her of all her possessions, except her ring, and rubbed leaves into her eyes. She was naked and vulnerable to the world around her. According to Thomas C. Foster, a professor at the University of Michigan-Flint, “Violence is one of the most personal and even intimate acts between human beings” (Foster 95). The violence that the main character experienced was a…show more content… “Thus she’d formed habits or practices of solitude that were closely bound up with, perhaps inextricable from, her character: her private, secret abiding self” (Oates 128). She liked to be alone and free. When she was alone in her solitary, she was able to be her “true” self. She was able to think and be whom she wanted, without worry of judgement. According to literary critic Charlotte Goodman, “The women in Oates’ novels long to forge a more meaningful existence for themselves” (Goodman 400). The main character does exactly this in her solitude. She searches for a way to provide more meaning to whom she really is, what she stands for and not what society deems her as or how her marriage defines
