Three Women

Maggie

An opening anecdote illustrates the absence of responsible adults in Maggie’s life, who could function as role models or guides: Maggie angrily quits soccer when she is demoted to a lesser team, as “she doesn’t have advisers telling her to relax, to hang back and think it over” (57). Her father is “strong” but “drunk” (58). On the other hand, Knodel “knows how to talk to her” (58). Knodel is an antithesis to the other adults in her life; he is interested, attentive, caring, and helpful. After the confusing experience in Hawaii, Maggie thinks to confide in Knodel via a letter. Taddeo suggests that Maggie’s desperate need for a caring and present adult in her life contributes to the relationship which forms between Maggie and Knodel.

Defense attorney Hoy’s reference to Maggie’s “experiences with an adult male in Hawaii” is part of an attempt to characterize Maggie as promiscuous and unreliable (58). Maggie is grateful for the prosecutor’s interjection, which inhibits Hoy in his attempt to “prove that whore is her baseline” (59). The defense’s effort to discredit Maggie with irrelevant and traumatic details from her past are problematized, as are the cultural narratives which represent sexual women as immoral and untrustworthy. It is presented as especially problematic that Maggie is condemned for a sexual encounter which was classifiable as rape according to North Dakota law. The condemnation of sexual women is further explored through Maggie’s experience with high school gossips who label Maggie a “slut” and a “whore” for having sex with Matteo (66-67).

Taddeo explores Maggie’s desire for Matteo, who seemed mature and handsome, and her excitement at having undertaken what felt like a rite of passage. After sleeping with Matteo, Maggie feels that she is being inducted into adult life; the act of having sex makes Maggie feel like an adult or “in the club” (64). Later, however, Matteo does not return her declaration of love, and when their affair ends she feels “impure and gross” (67). Maggie’s confusion and hurt foregrounds the illegal age gap which existed between Matteo and Maggie, which placed Matteo in a position of power and left Maggie, a legal child, ripe for exploitation. Through this relationship, Taddeo explores the recurring theme of female subjugation which is particularly likely in cases where a power imbalance exists.

This dynamic is foreshadowed early on in Knodel’s inappropriate messages to Maggie with the fact that he clearly sets the pace and nature of their relationship. Even when they declare their love for each other, “everything is on his schedule, everything is by his mandate” (122). Tellingly, Maggie considers at one point during the relationship whether her feelings are merely “reactionary,” rather than authentic love (111).

Taddeo emphasizes the power held by Knodel over Maggie, given the age difference and his status as her teacher. Spending time with Knodel makes Maggie feel alternately like a “super model” and like “she isn’t good enough” (107). Taddeo explores the dangers of seeking validation through the male gaze: Maggie derives her self-worth from what she perceives Knodel thinks of her. To continue to be perceived as desirable by Knodel, Maggie feels under immense pressure to enact whatever version of her he desires. She needs to be “fun, friendly, happy, and also troubled enough by her parents’ alcoholism that he can be a savior” (110). In other words, Maggie must constantly enact a performance. Even with her carefully maintained facade, Knodel is sometimes affectionate, but other days is distant. He “pushes her away and then pulls her back” (110). Maggie describes this as an exhausting roller coaster. Maggie continues to put herself through this exhausting roller coaster until Knodel himself stops the relationship, again illustrating that Knodel holds the power in their relationship.

Lina

Lina’s large suburban home comes to symbolize the monotonous regularity of her suburban life. She feels her “life slipping” away while she conducts “multiple washings of the kitchen floor” (93). Her daily chores, combined with Ed’s nightly rejection of her “becomes a montage of routine desperation” (93). Ed’s back as he turns away from her each night in bed becomes a “cold animal” to Lina (93). This metaphor illustrates the way that Ed’s constant rejection of her feels hostile, unnatural and devastating.

Like Lina’s childhood home, Ed has come to epitomize all that is boring, suburban, and repetitive, and once again, Aidan represents the antithesis of all that is monotonous and stale. After years of feeling bored and frustrated with Ed, Lina feels a “raw need being met” when she sleeps with Aidan (97). Lina has come to find the repetitiveness of her life suffocating and painful, and Aidan “takes the pain away” (101). She places Aidan on a pedestal; he is a romanticized and glorified escape from reality.

Lina feels that Aidan’s willingness to sleep with her while she has her period, as well as his pulling his jeans on afterwards without showering, is confirmation that Aidan is a “real man” (98). In Lina’s mind, real men are sexual, and their sexual appetites won’t be diminished by period blood. Aidan’s manliness is contrasted with Ed’s unmanliness. Ed and Lina have had sex while she is on her period “maybe eleven times” in their 11-year marriage (98). Aidan is characterized as stereotypically masculine and handsome, a tall and muscular country boy “with a square jaw and cobalt-blue eyes” (83). On the other hand, she describes Ed as looking like “a scientist” and being “slight of frame” (86).

Sloane

When Sloane’s mother takes her to be prescribed diet pills at 10 years old, it signifies to the reader that Sloane was taught that her value lies in her physical appearance. Sloane’s mother says, “I think you’ll be more comfortable if you lost some weight” (131). Tellingly, the young Sloane is quiet during this exchange. It is unsurprising that Sloane becomes unhealthily obsessed with regulating her weight when she gets older. When teenage Sloane develops an eating disorder to become a “Skinny Party Girl,” Sloane reflects that her mother would appreciate this goal (136). Her mother asks, “Why do you flush the toilet so many times?” rather than showing concern for Sloane’s wellbeing or addressing her disordered eating (140). This exchange solidifies for Sloane that her eating disorder is tolerated by her aloof mother because she values image above all else.

Sloane’s eating disorder also reflects the way that she tactically and carefully hones her image. Sloane decides as a teenager to focus on becoming “the best party girl she could be,” and that there is an “opening” for the skinniest party girl role (136). Sloane’s tactical decision-making process is also clear when she considers “fucking around indiscriminately” to redefine her teenage image (134). These excerpts reveal that Sloane’s facade is a carefully maintained construction, an inauthentic performance like Maggie’s.

The reader gets an insight into Sloane’s people-pleasing tendencies when she crashes Gabe’s car. Even though the accident was not her fault, she feels intense shame. When Gabe’s car is totaled, she can pinpoint “the precise moment an important man in her life made her feel unloved” (138). Sloane hates being looked at by Gabe, who she loves and used to be close with, like “she was a piece of shit” (138). This sets a precedent for Sloane of not wanting to hurt men she loves and informs why she compromises her own desires and sexual preferences to please Richard.