Two Gils Fat and Thin (by Mary Gaitskill) anylyse.

Two Girls Fat and Thin
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Two Girls Fat and Thin
The book Two Girls Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill narrate the childhood and early adulthood experiences of two different women, both in shape and attitude and how they connect over the philosophical movement founded by the late Anna Granite. Gaitskill uses these characters to demonstrate the adverse effects of sexual abuse and how people differ in the way they tackle challenges in life. Dorothy Storm, an obese Wall St. word-processor who works at night and sleeps at day, forges a friendship with Justine Shade, a pretty and slender secretary who is also a journalist, who interviews her as she writes an article on the now defunct cult of Granite. Despite their different lives and personalities, Dorothy’s and Justine’s past reveal their oddly parallel lives. They were both sexually abused as children; their peers considered them as outsiders despite being their equals regarding literacy and imagination and they both engaged in self-punishing actions as a means of escaping their miserable lives. However, Dorothy and Justine chose different ways in how to deal with their challenges. Gaitskill narrates Dorothy’s experiences in the first person and those of Justine in the third person. This paper analyzes the similarities and differences on how Dorothy and Justine dealt with trauma.
Dorothy and Justine were both sexually abused as children. Dorothy was forced into an incestuous affair with her father at the age of fourteen. Dorothy’s mother knew about the abuse but did nothing to stop it or help her overcome the trauma. Also, her father verbally and emotionally abused her at the dinner table which traumatized her, “With bitter pride, I hugged the inner me to myself at night and thought how I had enjoyed dinner, no matter what,” (Gaitskill, 2012, p120). As a result of the abuse, Dorothy was emotionally damaged, friendless and unhappy, and had difficulties adjusting. Justine was molested multiple times by a friend of the family at the age of five. Justice described her parents as being cool, distance and liberal-minded; which also played a role in her emotional damage. Gaitskill portrays Justine as “a neurotic, antisocial twenty-eight-year-old” (Gaitskill, 2012, p120) to show the extent of her emotional damage. The sexual abuse shaped their childhood and early adulthood.
The sexual abuse had devastating effects on their both of them. Justine’s experiences reflect a childhood full of sadistic behavior towards other girls accompanied by masochistic surrender to teenage tough-boys. Dorothy’s was traumatized as the defensive paranoia of her father, and the meek compliance of her mother escalated throughout her childhood. As victims of abuse, both women have debasing attitudes towards their bodies. They perceive them as estranged objects capable of betraying them. Both girls find themselves as outsiders among their peers. While Dorothy was shunned for her apparent physical difference (being fat), Justine was appalled by the cruelty and betrayal that young people are subjected to. The existing social order of adolescent suburban America perpetuated Justine’s fascination with fantasies of dom...