Joyce Carol Oates
Born in 1938 in Lockport, New
York, Joyce Carol Oates thrived in
the natural environment of the
farm country, despite the
devastation of the Great
Depression. She attended a oneroom schoolhouse. At age fourteen,
Oates received her first
typewriter from her grandmother.
She transferred to a high school in Lockport where she
excelled in English. She received a scholarship to the
University of Syracuse and then went on to get her masters
in only a year at the University of Wisconsin. There, she met
her husband, Raymond Smith. She taught at the University of
Detroit where she was exposed to the social turmoil and
Three Girls
By: Joyce Carol
Oates
violence of the 1960s that inspired some of her early writing.
In 1968, she moved to Canada where she taught at the
University of Windsor. From 1968 to 1978, she published two
novels a year, started a small press and published a literary
magazine, The Ontario Review. She later moved to New
Jersey and has been teaching at Princeton University ever
since. In the early 1980s, she reinvented the conventions of
Gothic fiction. Later her novels were characterized by a focus
on femininity, based on memories from her childhood. She has
written 56 novels and over 30 collections of short stories.
Today she continues to write and teach in New Jersey.
PLOT: the author’s selection and arrangement
of incidents in a story to shape the action and
give the story a particular focus. Discussions
of plot include not just what happens, but also
how and why things happen the way they do.
Exposition:
Oates sets
the scene,
describes
The Strand
and alludes
to the true
nature of
the female
protagonists.
Rising Action: The girls discover Marilyn Monroe, in
disguise, and shadow her as she shops.
Conflict: The girls do not want others in the store to
discover Marilyn; likewise, they do not want Marilyn to
discover that they are observing her.
Climax: The store owner detects theft and the girls
misinterpret his accusations as acknowledging Marilyn.
Also, Marilyn realizes that she is being followed by the
girls.
"I don't mind living in a man's world, as
long as I can be a woman in it." – Marilyn
Monroe
Falling Action: The girls offer to buy Marilyn’s books for
her.
Resolution: Marilyn gives them Selected Poems of Marianne
Moore.
Selected Quotes:
Please answer 4 of the 6 questions. 
“…though admittedly we were American middle class, and
Caucasian, and female. (Yet we were not “conventional”
females. In fact, we shared male contempt for the merely
“conventional” female” (74).
Discussion Questions:
“So many years later, I’m proud of us. We were so young. Young,
headstrong, arrogant, insecure though “brilliant” – or so we’d
been led to believe” (78).
“’Marilyn Monroe’ has entered history, and you have not. She will
endure, though the young woman with the blond braid will die.
And even should she wish to die, “Marilyn Monroe” cannot” (77).
“’She thinks she’s like us.’ You meant: a human being,
anonymous. Female, like us. Amid the ordinary unspectacular
customers (predominantly male) of the Strand” (77).
“For when you truly read poetry, poetry reads you” (75).
1. “That magical evening of Marilyn Monroe, when I kissed you for
the first time” (79).
What is the significance of the last quote in Three Girls to the
reader? What does it expose about the values of the girls?
2. From your perspective, when is the climax?
3. What is the moral/central theme of the story?
4. Throughout the exposition, the author utilized point of view. What
is the point of view? Is there more than one?
5. Identify the moments of suspense in the story. How do these
contribute to the order of events in the plot?
6. Is the plot primary or secondary to character?