This is the third book I’ve read from Ottessa Moshfegh, and I have to say that its charms haven’t worn off. I suppose Eileen can be characterized as a “female incel,” but the importance difference between her and a stereotypical incels is that Eileen’s sense of resentment is more diffuse; there is no single person or group that she pours it towards, whereas incels direct it towards women.
So much of Eileen’s personality and emotions is depicted in her body functions and her disgusting habits — she doesn’t shower, she doesn’t wash her hands, she uses laxatives to achieve some kind of blissed out post-coital state. This Moshfeghian archetype clearly echoes Flannery O’Connor, who uses disability as symbolic of spiritual debasement (e.g. Johnson in “The Lame Shall Enter First”, the retarded girl in “The One You Save May Be Your Own”, although in the last her dumbness is used to portray her innocence more than anything). Here the move is to use the decidedly unfeminine ways that Eileen acts with her body to portray her misery. Rebecca — feminine, beautiful, lively — is happy, the opposite of Eileen.
The twist is phenomenal, though I feel like it would have made more sense if Rebecca wasn’t involved. Why introduce her in the middle of the story? Eileen could have been the one who investigated the Polk case and done something about Mrs. Polk. Perhaps it had to have been Rebecca because Eileen clearly didn’t really care about Leonard; the ending was less about getting justice for him and more about Eileen finally getting the gumption to leave for New York City. Still, Rebecca is too thinly sketched as a character, and I still have a hard time believing that she would actually tie Mrs. Polk up.