Eleanor’s Clothes Symbol Analysis

Eleanor never looks “nice,” thinks her boyfriend Park—she looks like “art.” Eleanor, a self-admittedly big-boned teen girl with flaming red curls that she can never seem to tame, dresses in bizarre and ill-fitting clothes, often culled from the men’s section of Goodwill. She ties scarves and men’s neckties in her hair and on her wrists, and wears brightly-printed Vans sneakers that clash with her outfits’ muted tones. Eleanor’s clothes are always too big and too baggy—eventually, it becomes clear that Eleanor is trying to hide herself inside them from the prying eyes of her leering stepfather, Richie, and from the girls at school, including Tina and her crew, who mock Eleanor’s body. As the novel progresses, her clothes emerge as a symbol of Eleanor’s competing desires to both shrink herself and to announce herself as a presence that will not go away no matter how much the world tries to bring her down. Unwanted and mistreated at home and bullied at school, Eleanor is in a constant tug-of-war with herself as to whether she should make herself smaller to avoid scrutiny and negative attention, or puff herself up to declare that she won’t be silenced or made to feel invisible. When Eleanor’s clothes are stolen by Tina and the other girls and stuffed in a locker-room toilet, Eleanor is humiliated by having to walk through the halls of school in her gym unitard—but pleasantly surprised when she later realizes that Park, who glimpsed her in her gym suit, was excited by the body she’s been working so hard to hide in plain sight. Eleanor doesn’t change her style to please Park, or anyone else, but slowly begins to feel more at home in her own skin, even in spite of the onslaught of bullying she faces at school and at home. Eleanor’s odd, clownish clothes are as much a refuge as they are a prison, a dichotomy that further exemplifies the confusion and insecurity she faces each day even as she staunchly works to remain true to who she is.