In 1978, Oates moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where she continues to teach in Princeton University’s creative writing program; she and her husband also operate a small press and publish a literary magazine, The Ontario Review. Shortly after arriving in Princeton, Oates began writing Bellefleur, the first in a series of ambitious Gothic novels that simultaneously reworked established literary genres and reimagined large swaths of American history. Published in the early 1980s, these novels marked a departure from the psychological realism of her earlier work. But Oates returned powerfully to the realistic mode with ambitious family chronicles (You Must Remember This, Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart), novels of female experience (Solstice, Marya: A Life), and even a series of pseudonymous suspense novels (published under the name “Rosamond Smith”) that again represented a playful experiment with literary genre. As novelist John Barth once remarked, “Joyce Carol Oates writes all over the aesthetical map.” In 2000, Oates was a National Book Award finalist in fiction for Blonde, an ambitious and imaginative portrait of one of America’s greatest cultural icons, Marilyn Monroe. En cuanto a la traducción, en general me ha parecido correcta, pero… hay cositas, cositas aquí y allá como: When news of her grandmother's death reaches her, Marianne resolves to go to the funeral and to renew her connection to her family. A shy boy from the co-op named Hewie Miner offers to drive her across the state to the town where Corinne was raised. After traveling several hours, though, Marianne finds that she does not have it in herself to enter the chapel: she watches from outside and sees her mother and Judd, but neither of her other brothers or her father. On the way home, she has Hewie drive through Mt. Ephraim, past the Mulvaney Roofing building, through the streets she knew as a child, and past High Point Farm, realizing how removed she is now from it all.

When the rape is revealed, Marianne refuses to press charges against the student (whose father is a well respected businessman, and a friend of Marianne's own father). She feels she can't be her own witness because she had been drinking and the entire night had turned into a blur.

Themes of Innocence and Loss

Puoi avere un solo figlio miracoloso. Se sei fortunato. Però molta gente non lo è. (Quindi non dovete gongolare, è ovvio) We Were the Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates is a poignant exploration of the complexities of family, tragedy, and resilience. Through its themes, character development, narrative techniques, and implications for understanding human nature, the novel invites readers to contemplate the fragility and strength of the human experience. Malveiniai nuo pat kūrinio pradžios piešiami kaip mano įsivaizdavimą atitinkanti tradicinė amerikiečių šeima. Didelė, garsi, turinti kartais keistų tradicijų, ir net jei ne visada tobulai sutarianti, kažkokiu būdu vis viena labai vieninga. Pasakodama apie šios iš pirmo žvilgsnio tvirtos kaip kumštis šeimos byrėjimą autorė yra labai rūpestinga su kiekvienu jos nariu – iki smulkiausių kaulelių išnarstome visus, ir būtent todėl ta šeima skaitytojui tampa tokia brangi. Jie – tai žmonės, kuriuos pažįsti, jie – kartais tavo paties atspindys, net jei iš pradžių gali pasirodyti be galo tolimi, atskirti vandenyno, kito laikotarpio ir visiškai skirtingos aplinkos. Tačiau žmogiškos patirtys yra universalios, o čia jų pilna. Ir dažniausiai jos skaudžios, tokios, nuo kurių norėtųsi nusisukti, į kurias mieliau nežiūrėtum. Bet būtent to pasekmes šis kūrinys ir meistriškai narsto, o skaitytojas paliekamas tvarkytis su krūva emocijų, kurias tai palieka. Esta agresión sufrida por Marianne, la hija perfecta y adorada por el resto de su familia, sienta las bases de lo que será la novela. A partir de este momento, habrá un antes y un después en el comportamiento de cada uno de los miembros de la familia con respecto a Marianne y aunque a veces nos parezcan injustos ciertos comportamientos, y no entendamos algunas decisiones tomadas sobre todo por los padres, nada es gratuito aqui, y JCO nos ha dado ya todas las premisas, todas las pistas que marcan estos comportamientos. La Oates no da puntada sin hilo.

Despite her success (Oates has published 37 novels, 19 collections of short stories, four novellas, eight volumes of poetry, seven plays and eight academic essays), she has the habit of hitching the disclaimer "it seems like a small thing in the great scale of being" to the end of her statements, although this is possibly a rebuke to the giant egos of the literary world rather than straightforward modesty. The great scale of being is something she is in two minds about. "I veer between a vision of the human race rather like Jonathan Swift's, dark and embittered and satirical, and a kind of idealism that maybe there are just enough wonderful people in the world to make us feel thrilled with the possibilities of the human." Why did you choose Judd, the youngest of the Mulvaneys, to narrate the story? Was it difficult to have him tell so much about the interior lives of characters he did not always understand?Describe the character development in We Were the Mulvaneys. How does Joyce Carol Oates use language and imagery to bring the characters to life? In We Were the Mulvaney's animals are almost as important as people. I wanted to show the tenderness in our relationships with cats, dogs, and horses. Especially cats. Marianne's cat Muffin was based on a real cat of that name and everything about him in the novel is, or was, true in life. Marianne's experience is exactly what mine was. Muffin's life was saved for 13 miraculous months. Or, his death was forestalled. Exactly as in We Were the Mulvaneys, except that I was already married, and all the circumstances were different. This is a sentimental confession, but I may as well make it...

Last, I found it nearly absurd that a mother would treat household pets and farm animals better and as more important than her own children. On St. Valentine's night, 1976, after Marianne Mulvaney is named one of the "maids-in-waiting" at the prom, she goes to a party where she inadvertently drinks a great deal and is raped by an upperclassman.This is life, generations following generations. The destructive father is gone, and will be remembered, ironically, with affection. Old wounds are forgotten in the excitement and enthusiasm of the future. To be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved. The novelist must not impose an ending upon them. What might have been a tragedy in We Were the Mulvaneys becomes something quite different, yet to my mind this bittersweet ending is inevitable.