28 pages • 56 minutes read
Eileen
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BetaChapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Sunday”
Eileen helps her father get ready for Sunday Mass at X-ville's Catholic Church. Her Aunt Ruth comes each Sunday to pick him up, at which time Eileen consents to unlock the trunk of the car and give her father shoes to wear. Though she hates her father for his verbal abuse and alcoholism, Eileen is devoted to their routines: “I felt like killing my father, but I didn’t want him to die” (69). Eileen considers her Catholic upbringing: Her mother was aggressively nonreligious in comparison to her father’s rigid sense of Catholic duty. Eileen attended a small college for a year, until she was required to return home and care for her dying mother.
Eileen drives to the library, then spontaneously drives to Boston to test whether the car can make it. The broken exhaust pipe eventually makes her woozy; a cop pulls her over for swerving. The cop lets her go. On her return home, Eileen drives past Randy’s apartment and fantasizes about his reaction to her leaving town. When Eileen arrives home, she changes clothes, dressing from her mother’s closet. She remembers her old dog Mona that died a few days before her mother; Eileen considers the loss of Mona as far more emotionally jarring than the loss of her mother. She buried the dog by herself and told no one what happened. The narrator admits to frequently remembering Mona and still cries over the loss of the dog, fifty years later. She acknowledges that she may be misremembering her love for Mona: “I’ve gone over it again and again for years whenever I’ve felt it necessary or useful to cry” (86).
Chapter 5 Summary: “Monday”
Eileen drives to work at Moorehead fantasizing about her disappearance and how distraught her father will be. That afternoon, the warden introduces two new members of the Moorehead staff: the psychiatrist Dr. Bradley Morris and Rebecca Saint John, head of a new education program for the inmates. Rebecca’s beauty and charm attract Eileen, who quickly becomes obsessed with her. They bond when Rebecca comments on her distaste for women with large breasts. Eileen spends the afternoon planning conversations with Rebecca in her mind and anticipating how to best ingratiate herself.
Moorehead holds a Christmas pageant performed by the inmates. Eileen considers the strange juxtaposition between penal punishment and the inmates’ ages; she believes they are only children, and herself no better than any of them. Rebecca leaves in the middle of the performance, angered that the boys are forced to perform in such a way.
Eileen walks past the isolation room on her way back to her desk. Leonard Polk, a teenage boy imprisoned for patricide, is inside. He has been mute since the day of his incarceration. Eileen pulls his file from the office and reads the previous psychiatrist’s notes on him. When Rebecca enters the office, Eileen drops the file. Rebecca helps her reorganize the papers, then requests to take the file with her to read.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Tuesday”
The narrator considers how little compassion she had for people back in X-ville, being so consumed with her own misery. At Moorehead, Eileen helps Rebecca unlock her employee locker, revealing that the combination on all the lockers is the same. She tries to appease Rebecca. The narrator explores how Rebecca emotionally manipulated Eileen through compliments and false friendship. During visiting hours, Eileen watches mothers visit their sons and their obvious suffering, which Eileen tries to not let affect her. She interacts with Randy and is surprised to find that her intense crush on him has completely vanished with Rebecca’s arrival.
For the first time, Mrs. Polk visits her son Leonard. Eileen and the staff do not know at the time that Rebecca called Mrs. Polk the previous day to encourage this meeting. In the visiting room, Mrs. Polk tries to speak with her son, but Leonard is silent. When Mrs. Polk finally leaves, Rebecca enters the room and speaks quietly to Leonard. They then move to Rebecca’s office. Eileen becomes jealous and finds an excuse to go to Rebecca’s office; Rebecca distracts her by inviting her out for drinks that evening at X-ville's bar, O’Hara’s.
Eileen arrives at O’Hara’s to find the men in the bar leering at Rebecca. The two women spend the evening drinking and talking, with Rebecca flattering Eileen continuously. Rebecca speaks of Leonard Polk and her worry for him. The men in O’Hara’s try to start up a conversation; Rebecca introduces herself as Eileen, and Eileen as Rebecca. Rebecca and Eileen dance to a song on the jukebox. Rebecca leaves, but Eileen, feeling that she “was someone important at last” continues to drink at the bar (152).
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
In these chapters, the narrator reveals Eileen’s complicated relationship with her deceased mother. Her mother’s clothes function as a metaphor. Eileen wears them to “hide” behind a kind of mask (84). She uses the oversized clothes to feel thinner, as her mother expected. Eileen’s struggle with sexual and gendered roles in X-ville is tied to the influence of her mother, who encouraged Eileen to meet the beauty standards of the time.
Eileen does not have a good relationship with her body. She becomes disgusted with herself, repulsed by the body that her deceased mother will never be able to approve of. By wearing her mother’s clothes, Eileen struggles to reconcile her girlhood desires of appeasing her mother with the need to form her own independent identity.
Rebecca’s arrival, and particularly their first conversation in which Rebecca criticizes women with large breasts, impacts Eileen’s self-image. Rebecca is beautiful, confident, and independent. Eileen believes she is a friend who can temporarily relieve Eileen’s body dysmorphia or “hide the body” (97). Rebecca’s femininity contrasts with the femininity of Eileen’s mother, which immediately convinces Eileen that Rebecca will change her life.
The narrator admits to still feeling the pain of losing her dog Mona, but suggests that it may be the accumulation of fabricated memories rather than actual affection. By idealizing the dog’s death, especially as Eileen, she created something to love and be loved by. The validity of the narrative’s events rests upon the narrator’s memory. This admission further suggests the narrator’s unreliability, and that she might be misremembering events in X-ville.
When Eileen’s car fails to make it to Boston, Eileen discovers how far the things she depends upon in X-ville will get her. It is not until Chapter 8, when she abandons the car with Mrs. Polk inside, that Eileen will finally free herself from X-ville's influence. The car’s failure symbolizes how it is necessary for Eileen to figure out her own path in life. She can’t depend on anything—be it person, idealism, or item—from X-ville.
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