How do I access vectors after I’ve split them

I’m doing homework for a stats class where I have to perform some variance tests on the tooth growth data set in r. Specifically, I’m trying to test the variance of a continuous variable split by category. I’ve extracted each from the data frame and used the split function to obtain two vectors: one for each category. However, I can’t figure out how to actually use these vectors for my tests. I have outputs that say $OJ and $VC followed by numeric data and typing OJ or VC does not return the respective vector.