I will admit, the first time that I read through "Three Girls" by Joyce Carol Oates, I failed to find a meaning in this seemingly random discovery of the quasi-feminine Marilyn Monroe is a musty New York City book store. However, reexamining the story in class with a partner for word choice acted as a catalyst for understanding it, as I began to pick up on Oates' use of mythical diction to portray a scene of fantasy. Learning a bit about the author herself also helped put the story into perspective, as knowledge that Oates was a lesbian put a finger on the emotional tension that protruded throughout the entire work.
From my perspective, Oates wrote "Three Girls" in a attempt to justify her life choice and prove to the reader that a homosexual relationship can attain the same level of majesty and excitement as a heterosexual one. While this may not seem like such a revelation given the state of modern America (and California specifically), the 1950's were not nearly as inviting to those with different sexual orientation. Painting the scene as "two NYU girl poets drifting through the warehouse of treasures as through an enchanted forest" Oates toils away at chiseling a moment of mystique during a dreary winter in New York, a large feat in itself.
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