Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

I had to reread parts of this story and then truly reflect on the storyline after reading it.  I initially took this as a crime story with a simple girl playing with fire that she had no idea how to handle and getting herself into trouble.  But it didn't make sense that this man could "see" things that nobody else would be able to see.  The women cleaning the corn and the description of June sitting in her dress and high heels were known to Arnold Friendly.  This made me think that Friendly must have been a figment of some sort of evil, a change, or a challenge.  The girl is young, it's the nineteen sixties, and Arnold is old and broken, but persuasive and unrelenting.  Is this girl fighting something within herself?  Did Oates write this as her view into the fight that all women faced in the sixties trying to gain their place in the world, but then succumbing to outside forces?  "Connie" was a pretty girl and she was happier for it, where "June" was a plain and chunky girl and spent her time with her parents, working a bland job, and having virtually no fun from Connie's perspective.  This could be a view of the feminist perspective on what women were fighting against in this era, either be beautiful and, eventually troubled, or bland, ugly and have no life.