“Most everyone sweats under one circumstance… or another.”

34. Eileen – Otessa Moshfegh

Pure weirdo squalor seems to make Eileen, not exactly happy, but bitterly pleased, I guess. Eileen is the kind of woman who likes talking about her bowels rather endlessly and is very wrapped up in the minutiae of her job as a secretary in a teen boys’ prison. She shoplifts, she takes care of her father who was a police officer but has devolved with alcohol abuse, she stalks Randy the guard, and she obsesses over her fantasies about getting out while also basically resenting herself having to even breathe, in addition to everything around her.

Daria had a future and talent while seeming awkward and out of place, Eileen is not really capable of talent or having a future without drudgery, unfortunately. Not in her time period of the early 1960s and certainly not without a lot of psychological help. She really seems rather hopeless for the most part, which is an interesting and uncomfortable character study unto itself. She’s probably the target audience of the short film about body care and grooming so you’ll be worthy of humanity they showed on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and she definitely ignored it while knowing herself too well from the inside out already.

Until the dreary, frigid winter when Eileen is 24, she keeps on as is. But then, Rebecca St. John comes. Eileen decides to pin all her hopes and dreams on Rebecca St. John and not notice that she’s being pulled into crime. To be fair, Eileen seems like she needed a kick and Rebecca gave her the worst kind while also giving her somebody to idolize, too overwhelming.

 

I lived with Ozma for most of her life and let me tell you, she could have enchanted Eileen, Rebecca St. John, and the entire boys’ prison right back out of crime with her little chocolate kissed nose.