First Love: A Gothic Tale

First Love: A Gothic Tale
	First edition
Author	Joyce Carol Oates
Illustrator	Barry Moser
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Gothic novel
Publisher	Ecco Press
Publication date	1996
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	85 pp
ISBN	0-88001-457-1
OCLC	33165822
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 20
LC Class	PS3565.A8 F57 1996
Preceded by	Zombie
Followed by	We Were the Mulvaneys

First Love: A Gothic Tale is a novella by award-winning novelist and essayist Joyce Carol Oates and illustrator Barry Moser. It tells the story of Joise S_____, a girl who goes to stay at her aunt's mansion in upstate New York. While there, she has an incestuous relationship with her cousin, Jared. The novella deals with two of the more common recurring themes in Oates' work: "teenage initiation and perplexing and problematic love."^[1]

Plot summary[]

11-year-old Josie arrives in upstate New York to live with her great-aunt after her mother abandons her father for no apparent reason. There, she meets her 25-year-old cousin, Jared, who is studying to be a minister. Her stay is very unpleasant; she is physically and psychologically abused by both her mother and great-aunt. She is also bullied without mercy at her new school. Her mother turns her away for love and comfort. Feeling abandoned and unloved, she turns to Jared for the affection she longs for. However, Jared's intents are anything but to love and care for her. He uses false affection to get her to self-mutilate herself, drink her own blood, look at pornographic material, and endure verbal abuse from him. He soon begins sexually abusing her, which Josie mistakes to be him expressing true love to her, although she knows that what they are doing is wrong. Jared attempts to force Josie to kidnap a very young girl for him at which point Josie is able to finally resist, leading to the breakdown of the relationship with Jared. The novella ends with Jared's return to the seminary and with Josie looking forward to a new chapter in her life.^[2]

Notes[]

^ Loeb, Monica. "'Useless as Moths' Wings' Oates Revision of Checkov's 'The Lady with the Pet Dog.'" Literary Marriages: A Study of Intertexuality in a Series of Short Stories by Joyce Carol Oates, pp. 87-104. Bern: Peter Lang, 2002.
^ Gates, David. "American Gothic." New York Times 15 Sept., 1996.

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[1] Loeb, Monica. "'Useless as Moths' Wings' Oates Revision of Checkov's 'The Lady with the Pet Dog.'" Literary Marriages: A Study of Intertexuality in a Series of Short Stories by Joyce Carol Oates, pp. 87-104. Bern: Peter Lang, 2002.

[2] Gates, David. "American Gothic." New York Times 15 Sept., 1996.

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v t Works by Joyce Carol Oates
The Wonderland Quartet	A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967) (1968) Them (1969) Wonderland (1971)
The Gothic Saga	Bellefleur (1980) (1982) (1984) My Heart Laid Bare (1998) The Accursed (2013)
Other novels	With Shuddering Fall (1964) (1973) (1975) (1976) Son of the Morning (1978) (1979) (1979) (1981) (1985) (1986) You Must Remember This (1987) American Appetites (1989) Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990) Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (1993) (1994) Zombie (1995) We Were the Mulvaneys (1996) Man Crazy (1997) (1999) Blonde (2000) Middle Age: A Romance (2001) I'll Take You There (2002) (2003) The Falls (2004) (2005) Black Girl / White Girl (2006) The Gravedigger's Daughter (2007) My Sister, My Love (2008) Little Bird of Heaven (2009) Mudwoman (2012) The Sacrifice (2015) (2020)
Novellas	Black Water (1992) First Love: A Gothic Tale (1996) Beasts (2001) The Corn Maiden: A Love Story (2005) A Fair Maiden (2010)
Short story collections	By the North Gate (1963) Upon the Sweeping Flood and Other Stories (1966) The Wheel of Love and Other Stories (1970) Marriages and Infidelities (1972) The Goddess and Other Women (1974) Crossing the Border (1976) (1988) Demon and Other Tales (1996) I Am No One You Know: Stories (2004) High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories, 1966–2006 (2006) The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2007) Wild Nights! (2008) Dear Husband (2009) The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (2011) (2016)
Short stories	"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (1963) "Stalking" (1972) "The Temple" (1996)
Young adult fiction	Big Mouth & Ugly Girl (2002) Small Avalanches and Other Stories (2003) Freaky Green Eyes (2003) Sexy (2005) After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (2006)