SEPARATION ANXIETIES - Lsu - Louisiana State University

so she could hear his breathing and she could smell the slightly sweetish-stale odor of his body”
(Oates 29). This invasion of personal space is another patriarchal violation, yet Buttinger goes
even further. Whenever Rita does a problem incorrectly, Buttinger “might advance upon her
nudging against her even sometimes drawing his thick beefy hands against her breasts quickly
and seemingly accidentally so she didn’t know what was happening or how she might be to
blame for it happening if it was” (Oates 29). Oates attributes to Buttinger not only the power to
violate but also the ability to transfer responsibility for his behavior to the object of his
dominance.
These scenes reveal much about how Oates constructs the world of Hammond and her
main characters’ later decision to separate themselves from that world. Male authority figures are
constructed as ignorant and/or abusive. Female authority figures are passive and/or complicit in
the dissemination of male dominance. Even the family is not a refuge from the political structure
of the dominant community, as parents and male siblings are constructed as disinterested and
abusive. Therefore, as Oates charts the progression of the Foxfire gang, we see the girls rejecting
their families as havens or models, followed by their outright attack on Buttinger as
representative of the dominant system. This narrative situation seems to suggest that women’s
unequal stature in mainstream society, exemplified here through working-class lesbian
characters, might justify the formation of a separatist community. 8
The action taken against Buttinger suggests that such pervasive oppression may be met
not only with rejection of dominant ideals but also with organized, physical resistance to
dominant institutions. Foxfire spraypaints descriptions of Buttinger’s crimes on his car, which he
subsequently and unknowingly drives through Hammond; the members of the community then
reject Buttinger and he disappears from the narrative. This course of events suggests that one
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