The Art of the Unhinged Woman: Discussing Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Eileen”

Bland, depressing, nasty, morbid, and repulsive are just a few of the words that litter the Goodreads reviews under Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen.

The negative criticism doesn't stop under any single work of Moshfegh. This type of response seems to be a continued pattern alongside the praise-filled 5 star reviews.

BookTok, a growing community of avid readers on the video platform TikTok, continuously raved about an earlier book of Moshfegh’s titled My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Appealing to those who do judge books by their covers, its 18th century art cover of Portrait of a Young Woman In White and the overlaying hot pink title was the perfect aesthetically pleasing feature in BookTok videos. This was my introduction to Ottessa Moshfegh and her writing.

The plot centers around a young, independently wealthy woman who consumes a combination of pills to put herself to sleep for an entire year. Other parts of the book focus on the narrator's general boredom and distaste for the lifestyle she lives, with the setting rarely leaving her New York City apartment. It's understandable how the book found itself in a swirl of popularity during a year like 2020; the state of constant hibernation would have surely resonated  with those living in quarantine. There are also the readers who found the descriptions of the mundane and, more controversially, the inclusion of topics such as addictive drug use and debilitating mental illness, to be off-putting. 

Like many other readers, I found myself disliking the narrator. The nihilism and pessimism that drives her way of thinking had grown to shape her as incredibly insufferable in my eyes. Reading through the perspective of a character bathed in an endless cycle of self-loathing and resentment for others, I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable. I had never encountered a character so unlikeable, especially within a book where a “rollercoaster'' plotline is absent. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that people have actually been idolizing characters like this for years.

They’re labeled as an “unhinged woman.” The term encapsulates an entire genre of women in media who fall between the spectrum of explicitly “good” and “bad.” She is morally gray, oftentimes depicted committing criminal acts with little to no remorse. The unhinged woman is more than someone who simply defies the standards society places on them; after all, this can easily apply to the familiar manic pixie dream girl that dominates young adult fiction. While the adored manic pixie dream girl is considered cool in their world for being nonconforming, the unhinged woman is perceived as the exact opposite. 

To fully get a sense of this type of character, we can look at the leading character from my favorite Ottessa Moshfegh book, Eileen. 

Eileen Dunlop despises everything that presents itself in her day-to-day life. She narrates the book from a mature perspective, telling the story of Eileen as an elderly woman. The degree of her resentment is in fact so strong that the name Eileen is entirely self-made, done in an effort to recognize the narrator as an entirely different identity from that of her young adult self. The name of her hometown, X-Ville, is also a pseudonym. 

The story of Eileen is set in New England during a harsh winter in the 1960s. Working at a juvenile center for boys, Eileen narrates her routine of seeing X-Ville’s troubled youth firsthand. Eileen is blunt in her hatred for X-Ville and the desire to leave for the city, with her days of caring for her alcoholic father becoming more unbearable. When her usual uneventful existence is interrupted by a glamorous new prison psychologist, Eileen sees her savior and ticket out of X-Ville. Rebecca St. John is beautiful, friendly, and confident: everything that Eileen desired to have for herself. As the pair grow closer, Eileen finds herself unraveling a case of patricide, pushing her to question her means of escaping X-Ville and the newcomer she had formerly idolized. 

Eileen is undoubtedly an unusual character. A notable characteristic of Eileen is that she is incredibly observant and opinionated. Nearly every character interaction she has will include a comment on their appearance or behavior, either driven by envy or annoyance. This can be uncomfortable at times, since we’re not used to hyperfocusing on the details of other people’s bodies. Eileen, on the other hand, does this very naturally. 

It wasn’t the self deprecating thoughts that had led me to view her as odd; in fact, this was of little concern. I won’t go into too much detail, but extreme laxative consumption, shoplifting, drunk driving, and outright stalking of her co-worker are a few anecdotes that readers will have the pleasure of learning about. Eileen gives readers the full extent of her activities by including every last detail (even for her stories of taking laxatives). It is understandable how this would be labeled as “gross” by reviewers. 

Ottessa Moshfegh has expressed her interest in the human body, and it is clear to see how that is incorporated in her writing. We can see the interest in not only the physical behaviors of the body, but the mind as well, in a character like Eileen. To read from her perspective grants us a sort of access into her mind, and her thoughts and ideas are practically laid out in front of us. What struck me while reading Eileen was how Moshfegh had connected the physical and the mental. I’ve read books about characters who loathed themselves and despised their peers. It is different to feel and understand the anger that drives their self-hatred, and to even start to feel equally suffocated when reading about the environment that traps that very character. 

There’s a set of underlying feminist implications in the unhinged woman. It’s not about glamorizing murder or morally questionable acts; the concept of glamorization for the sake of pushing an aesthetic is something that is actually challenged within this subgenre. It is difficult to romanticize Eileen as a character. She’s described to be weird and unremarkable, not to mention her questionable habits that are mentioned throughout the book. 

An important component of the unhinged woman is that a centralized love interest is insignificant or omitted entirely. There is no dependent dynamic that entangles the unhinged woman, and the decision making instead rests in the hands of our main character. 

This quality of independence and isolation in a character like Eileen almost encourages a feeling of hope while you’re reading. When the character has experienced nothing but the mundane and feels constant loneliness, you start to find the character’s desperation mirrored through your own. When Eileen saw her opportunity in Rebecca St. John, I found myself entirely engrossed in the plot to see if she makes it out. I wanted to be reassured in a sense, and I didn’t realize it until I finished reading.

The appeal that I found in Eileen would not have been formed if I hadn’t been granted all of the parts to Eileen’s perspective, and that means all of it. The taboo aspects needed to be present, and ended up humanizing her more than anything. This is what makes the character of the unhinged woman likable, because the audience feels and relates to them. 

I think there’s something appealing about the honesty of Eileen, in that it encapsulates the honesty of womanhood. We are given a transparent, intimate insight into Eileen’s mind when it comes to seeing how she feels about the world and herself. What is more intimate than your dark desires, deepest insecurities, and intrusive impulses? The unhinged woman acts upon the taboo, and it makes us uncomfortable because of their lack of discomfort. They embrace the hushed topics in our lives with little consideration, which is something we aren’t used to.

What we see as taboo exists on a spectrum of what is socially unacceptable to strictly forbidden. When reading the criticisms for Eileen, much of it pertains to the descriptions of the body. Looking at it from a different perspective, maybe Eileen  expresses the things that we don’t have the courage to express ourselves. We wouldn’t admit to what we find ugly on our own bodies, and certainly wouldn’t be transparent in those observations. This isn’t to say that the things Eileen thinks and does shouldn’t be uncomfortable, but rather that there is normality in experiencing the discomfort we might feel in our own bodies. 

There’s a range of feelings that I have when finishing a Moshfegh book. Eileen, out of those I’ve read thus far, left me with satisfaction. I enjoyed a very unexpected plot twist and the opportunity to place myself within the mind of a peculiar character. 

On a final note, these two quotes from an interview with Ottessa Moshfegh concerning Eileen offer a great preface to those who have yet to read it:

“I’m interested in the stories we tell ourselves, and how they may conflict with other people’s stories about the world, and how, if we’re operating under a delusion, we might make really weird decisions. I like to explore that in fiction — why we do weird things.”

“I read because I want to change, because I want to learn something and have an experience. If I’m having an experience where nothing is happening to me, I’m going to look at that book as… nothing. And I don’t want to write nothing.”