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 Do With Me What You Will
by Joyce Carol Oates
New York: Vanguard, 1973
563 pages
Dust Jacket Blurb
DO WITH ME WHAT YOU WILL brings to life in Elena Howe the year's most transfixing heroine. A novel with a contemporary setting reflecting today's social upheavals and shifting morality, it is, in the author's words, "a love story that concentrates upon the tension between two American 'pathways' : the way of tradition, or Law; and the way of spontaneous emotion—in this case, Love. In the synthesis of these two apparently contradictory forces lies the inevitable transformation of our culture.
"Romantic love is one of our Western religions and must be respected as such; it must be acknowledged as the violent, unstoppable, rather beautiful force it is. But the West is also a culture of Law : American society will never be transformed by stray acts of violence in the streets—it will be transformed only through the courts. And they, in turn, will not be transformed until the men who run them are changed, individual by individual. Ours is still a time of romantic love; the time of a more communal, transcendental love is not yet come. DO WITH ME WHAT YOU WILL suggests such a transformation.
"If what is available to an individual is romantic love, then it must be—it will be—this kind of love that liberates." In the "freeing" from the enchantment of her "self," Elena Howe lives a drama in which, by a continual process, she is raised to a higher aspect of her own being through involvement with a man—a drama of marriage and adultery that constructs an hour-by-hour, thought-by-thought experience both shattering and redemptive.
Excerpt
 "Things move from invisibility to visibility," he said slowly. "There are tremendous forces, like hurricanes or floods, that people have inside them. Sometimes there is a break and the force rushes out. It can't be stopped. . . . But then there's calm again. It's as if there were terrible ghosts inside us that were always prodding and testing our skins, looking for weaknesses. Then one day they rush out into the world, outside us. And so a 'crime' is committed. And yet everyone is innocent until the crime he has committed is given a name. Until then he's innocent."
Elena said suddenly, "Everyone is innocent . . . ?"
He looked at her in surprise.
"Everyone is the same. Everyone is innocent . . . ?" Elena asked.
"Under the law, yes. Yes. As long as we stay invisible."
He spoke courteously to her, but he did not smile. His lips tensed.
"Not just the bad people, but the people they do it to . . . the crimes to . . . ?" Elena said slowly, falteringly. She stared at Howe intensely; it was the first time she had spoken and she was aware of everyone looking at her in surprise. Howe himself seemed embarrassed. ". . . those people . . . they are innocent too? Even though they never get put on trial . . . ? I mean the victims. . . . They're innocent too . . . ?"
Other Editions
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Reviews
- Library Journal, August 1973, p2336
- Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 1973, p833
- Publishers Weekly, August 20, 1973, p83-84
- America, October 6, 1973, p250
- Washington Post Book World, October 7, 1973, p3
- New York Times Book Review, October 14, 1973, p1
- New York Times, October 15, 1973, p35
- New Yorker, October 15, 1973, p185-186
- Newsweek, October 15, 1973, p107
- Time, October 15, 1973, E3-E4
- New Republic, October 27, 1973, p26-27
- Ms, November 1973, p39
- Best Sellers, November 1, 1973, p339-340
- America, November 17, 1973, p382
- National Observer, November 24, 1973, p25
- Atlantic, December 1973, p127
- Saturday Evening Post, January 1974, p72
- Nation, January 5, 1974, p20-21
- Listener, January 10, 1974
- Times Literary Supplement, January 11, 1974, p25
- Observer, January 13, 1974, p25
- Booklist, January 15, 1974, p517
- Spectator, January 19, 1974, p75
- New York Review of Books, January 24, 1974, p36-37
- New Statesman, January 25, 1974, p121-122
- Choice, February 1974, p1868
- Denver Quarterly, Spring 1974, p84-89
- Hudson Review, Spring 1974, p122-124
- Prairie Schooner, Spring 1974, p77-78
- Contemporary Review, April 1974, p218
- Sewanee Review, Winter 1974, p138-140
Awards
- New York Times Notable Books of the Year
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Page address:
http://jco.usfca.edu/works/novels/dowithme.html
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