28 pages • 56 minutes read
Ottessa MoshfeghEileen
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Eileen
Eileen Dunlop, a twenty-four-year-old secretary living in X-ville, is the novel’s protagonist. Eileen is depressed and dissatisfied with her life in X-ville, caring for her father through his alcohol addiction, and working at X-ville's juvenile penitentiary, Moorehead. She frequently fantasizes about running away to New York City to start her life over. She is disconnected from her sister, Joanie, and has no friends in X-ville. Though Eileen is depressed, envious of other women, extremely lonely, and imagines herself being impaled on the icicles that line her home’s doorway (9), she is resolved to live and change her life. She calls herself a “fabulous shoplifter” (24).
Eileen obsesses about her appearance. She finds her own body repulsive, has no interest in sex, and restricts her eating in order to fulfill society’s beauty standards. After her mother’s death, Eileen wears her mother’s clothes to make her body appear smaller.
Eileen is the name that the narrator gives to her twenty-four-year-old self; the reader never learns the narrator’s true name, nor the name of the New England town called X-ville. The narrator is unreliable as she describes the events of the novel fifty years into the future. The future Eileen, at seventy-four years old, lives a life she is satisfied with. She has lived in New York for many years and experienced everything that Eileen hoped for.
Rebecca
Rebecca arrives in X-ville following her graduation from Harvard and appointment as Moorehead’s new head of education. She is tall and thin, with red hair and blue eyes. She dresses in expensive clothing. From Eileen’s perspective, Rebecca is beautiful, charming, and confident, with “a haughty, precisely articulated accent” (95). Rebecca foils Eileen’s character. Both women value independence, don’t want marriage, and have similar distaste for societal beauty standards. However, Rebecca’s personality, her authority at Moorehead, and the fact that she lives alone makes Rebecca’s character a symbol for all that Eileen hopes to achieve in life.
Rebecca manipulates the people around her with flattery, focusing on Eileen. She believes she is morally superior to the legal and penal systems in place in X-ville. She takes it upon herself to make sure that Mrs. Polk is punished for her actions against her son. Despite her convictions, Rebecca is unable to bring Mrs. Polk to justice and relies on Eileen. Rebecca is an idealistic and static character who doesn’t change in the novel. She functions to motivate Eileen to run away from X-ville.
Eileen’s Family
Eileen’s family is her main source of abuse and unhappiness. They act as the antagonists in the story. Eileen’s father is an ex-police officer who values rigid structures and social codes. He has an alcohol addiction and is delusional. He verbally abuses Eileen, who describes him as “fearful and crazy the way old drunks get” (3). Her father is devotedly Catholic, while her late mother was aggressively nonreligious and often belittled her husband’s Catholicism. Eileen’s mother is recently deceased from a painful illness, during which time Eileen cared for her. Eileen’s mother was never affectionate when Eileen was a child, had an alcohol addiction like her husband, and often berated Eileen for her appearance. Eileen’s sister, Joanie, lives a life of relative freedom compared to Eileen. Joanie lives with a boyfriend she loves and doesn’t feel obligated to help Eileen care for their father. Eileen’s envy of Joanie’s life makes Joanie a static antagonist.
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By Ottessa Moshfegh
