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Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

BRENDA DALY (ESSAY DATE 1996)

SOURCE: Daly, Brenda. "How Does 'I' Speak for 'We'?: Violence and Representation in Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang." In Lavish Self-Divisions: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates, pp. 205-22. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996.

In the following essay, Daly views Foxfire to be a novel about girls who utilize language to defend themselves against male-perpetrated violence.

Through its narrator, Madeleine "Maddy" Wirtz, Foxfire, Confessions of a Girl Gang¹ explores the complex relationship between language and violence. Fifty-year-old Maddy, a member of FOXFIRE (always spelled in caps) from age thirteen to age seventeen, uses her notes and memories—as well as some flights of imagination—to chronicle the gang's adventures from 1952...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Joyce Carol Oates (Essay Date 1999)
4. General Commentary
   1. Linda Wagner-Martin (Essay Date 1995)
5. Title Commentary
   1. Do With Me What You Will
   2. Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Feminism
2. Joyce Carol Oates