27 pages • 54 minutes read
The Fat Girl
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Gender Roles, Female Sexuality, and Motherhood
From the beginning of the story, Louise is treated differently than her brother because of her gender. Whereas her brother is allowed to eat sandwiches and chips, Louise, who is nine years old and still growing, has to eat whatever her mother prepares for the two of them. She explains to Louise, “In five years you’ll be in high school and if you’re fat the boys won’t like you; they won’t ask you out” (158). Louise thus learns from an early age that she should be thin in order to appeal to men. Just as Louise “inherits” her disordered eating and body image issues from her mother, her mother seeks to “pass on” her normative role as a wife and mother in a heterosexual relationship.
However, Louise never seems very interested in men, especially not at the age of nine. The story shares this skepticism, beginning not with eating but with a moment of sexual violence or near-violence—a drunk teenager “jamm[ing] his tongue” in Louise’s mouth (158). This sets the tone for the female characters’ experiences of heterosexual sex, which Carrie is “not sure […] she like[s]” and which Louise’s friend Joan likes (at least initially) more as a form of validation than as an expression of desire (163). Though Louise does ultimately try to live up to her mother’s expectations by marrying a young and successful lawyer, she does not find the relationship or the role of wife fulfilling: “[T]here were times, with her friends, or with Richard, or alone in the house, when she was suddenly assaulted by the feeling that she had taken the wrong train and arrived at a place where no one knew her, and where she ought not to be” (168).
Part of the problem is that Louise feels like Richard does not know or understand her real self—something he proves when he responds negatively to her weight gain. When Louise decides she no longer wants to be thin, she gives up on Richard as well, relieved to be done with him. However, there is also some suggestion that Louise does not need Richard to find sensual (if not sexual) fulfillment. Louise’s illicit snacking, like her appreciation of the feel of her own hair against her skin, is a way for her to enjoy her body outside a sexual relationship. Significantly, the one aspect of her prescribed gender role in which Louise does find fulfillment—motherhood—is another. Dubus describes Louise “nurs[ing] both [her son] and her appetites” and “enjoy[ing] her body through her son’s mouth” (170). The unique physical intimacy of pregnancy and breastfeeding affirms Louise’s body, which nourishes and comforts her child. It also renders intimacy with (and affirmation from) Richard superfluous. When Louise holds her son against her, she “feels that his sleeping body touches her soul” (172). As a mother, Louise feels that someone (her son) loves her and accepts her for who she truly is.
Though Louise’s own childhood experiences reveal that not all mother-child bonds are so fulfilling, she seems to find healing in the opportunity to redo that relationship with her son. Regardless, Louise’s relief that her marriage is over suggests that heterosexual relationships may not be fulfilling for women, at least in a society where sex and body image are so entangled.
The Connections Between Body, Soul, and Selfhood
By exploring how changes in Louise’s physical body affect both her own identity and other people’s perceptions of her, the story repeatedly questions the relationship between the body, soul, and self. Western culture has often viewed the soul and body as completely separate, with the body being a temporary vessel for the soul. However, for Louise and others in this story, the body and soul prove deeply connected.
As Louise undertakes Carrie’s regimen, she feels as if she is losing more than just weight and that the changes in her body are affecting her soul as well. Despite never having a bad temper before, Louise becomes irritable on her diet. She views this temper not as a genuine change in who she is but as something alien to her: “a demon which, along with hunger, was taking possession of her soul” (164). Louise’s father’s joke that “now there’s less of [her] to love” echoes Louise’s sense that she is no longer wholly herself (165). At times she feels that her soul is in “some rootless flight” (166), whereas elsewhere she likens growing thin to becoming a citizen of a new country. Both images suggest a feeling of being adrift. Although Louise enjoys the praise of family members and acquaintances, this joy fades quickly into an existential crisis. She feels that her husband cannot truly understand her because he never knew her when she was fat.
The only way Louise can feel like herself again is by gaining weight. Richard becomes cruel and treats Louise poorly, suggesting that he only liked her before because she was thin. Louise realizes this is Richard’s problem, not hers, and eventually she does not even respond to him anymore: “[B]ecause his rage went no further than her weight and shape, she felt excluded from it […] she knew that beneath the argument lay the question of who Richard was” (171). If Richard only loved the “fake” (thin) Louise, Louise only loved the person Richard acted like when she was thin—not the cruel, superficial person she now sees he truly is. Therefore, she gives up on the relationship. It is only through changes in Louise’s physical body that she discovers her own identity as well as the identities of those around her.
Secrecy in Interpersonal Relationships
Louise struggles to form meaningful relationships with other people, largely due to her secrecy. When she is nine years old, Louise learns that the person she truly is (someone who wants to eat sandwiches and candy) is not acceptable to her mother, the one person who is supposed to love and accept her no matter what. Because she doesn’t want to disappoint her mother, Louise begins hiding food and eating in secret. Presumably, Louise believes that if her snacking is unacceptable to her own mother, it would be unacceptable to other people too, so she never tells anyone about it.
However, Louise’s secrecy goes beyond her eating behavior; she has trouble forming deep friendships and opening up to other people. In high school, she only has two friends (Marjorie and Joan), neither of whom has any notion of the secret that dominates Louise’s mind. Marjorie and Joan will remember Louise simply as “a girl whose hapless body was destined to be fat” (160). Marjorie and Joan don’t have much in common with Louise, and their friendship seems largely circumstantial. Each girl is absorbed in private anxieties—Joan feels she’s “plain,” and Marjorie is insecure about her intelligence—that they do not share with one another. Joan, for example, will later say she was “forced into the weekend and nighttime company of a neurotic smart girl and a shy fat girl” (160), suggesting that she never really knew either girl except as a supporting character in her own drama.
In college, Louise has one friend, Carrie, who is also her roommate. Although Carrie pours her heart out nightly to Louise, Louise listens far more than she talks. Nevertheless, Carrie forces Louise out of her secrecy when she says, “Louise? I just wanted to tell you. One night last week I woke up and smelled chocolate. You were eating chocolate, in your bed. I wish you’d eat it in front of me, Louise, whenever you feel like it” (162). This creates a new level of intimacy for Louise and seems like a hopeful turn, but ultimately what Carrie does with the information does not help Louise. Additionally, Louise still does not have the ability to articulate what she really wants, so she goes along with the diet Carrie puts her on for many years.
Louise finds her own way out of her secrecy after giving birth to her baby and gaining weight. She stops caring what Richard and her mother think about her weight and starts eating openly between meals. At the very end, Louise even eats a candy bar in front of Richard because she is so happy fantasizing about his impending departure that she almost forgets he is still there. She still doesn’t have a healthy relationship with a romantic partner, but she has one with her child, with whom she is by necessity completely vulnerable and honest; she has never “hidden” her eating behavior from her son because he was “with her” as she resumed those behaviors during her pregnancy.
Unlock all 27 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Andre Dubus II
