Lucky Girl - Completed

Overall, I want happiness to come to Evie and for her to stop obsessing over boys (feelings can't always be controlled though…) :(. There are very few moments where she seems to pause and enjoy her life. Instead, almost every sober second seems to be filled with anxiety.

Her parents pay for everything, including her half of the utility bills, so really, nothing matters at all to her, and I know she doesn’t really understand why we have to suffer in the cold, or why I kept telling her to buy a hot water bottle instead of cranking on the radiators every time she goes to bed. If I didn’t keep remembering to switch it off our bills would be astronomical every month.

I don't understand why they have to suffer in the cold either. Evie hasn't raised any environmental issues. Her concerns seem to be entirely financial and if I were Claire, I would be annoyed with Evie about this and pay the bill so it becomes a non-issue. This doesn't need to be a point of stress for either of them. Also as working class as Evie is (and I hope she bonds with Dean over it in the future), she's also privileged and benefiting from Claire's father's wealth and Claire's father's having conveniently evicted the previous tenants. It's disgusting to consider how difficult things would be for her without her basically having her rent subsidized. She's already struggling with money. It must be so hard for working class students who only have themselves to rely on.

Evie's reaction to Dean's criticism is interesting. Based on her shyness to discuss and show others her work in the past, I would have thought that she wouldn't be so sensitive to criticism from fellow art students. Dean's rudeness is too much, but he's clearly good and being criticized by someone who is decent is refreshing? a welcome challenge? The rude parts and his poor word choice (using words like "lazy") can be ignored. I understand Evie's POV too, but as an alternative I imagined her reacting positively to finally being criticized by someone with standards and out of the twilight zone where people unhelpfully and blindly praise everything. Dean definitely needs to work on his delivery, though.

Marnie is a mess. I find her odd, interesting, clueless, shallow and incredibly offensive. Poor Evie seems to attract and tolerate people who have little sense and little consideration for her. I feel like Marnie parrots ideas because she thinks they're cool, but she doesn’t understand them and she doesn't have any actual convictions.

We’re not meant to be caged in, we’re meant to make something of ourselves and to stand out as being different. I like to imagine myself written about in some magazine far in the future, to have been a notable woman with notable things to contribute to society, not just a mother, a wife, the property of some dull, unextraordinary man.

This screams internalized misogyny. I feel like if she actually discussed and had the interests she claims to have (politics, anti-gentrification…) she would have been called out so many times by now that she wouldn't say such things. I hope Evie dumps her as a friend because she's a user who seems incapable of having any deep thoughts and plays at understanding the working class/being poor because she thinks it's cool.

There's so much going on with the Christmas family dinner. Wow…

I feel for Evie and wish her family was more supportive of her. She must have been a sweet, passive, agreeable child to not have had fights with her family about some of these things in the past. I can understand if her behavior now shocks them. I don't have a sexist family, but I was born a troublemaker, so I was caught off-guard by Evie having these conversations with her family as a college student instead of as a primary school kid. I think Evie being quiet and finally calling out her mother (of all people) as being sexist is an interesting choice. Even though she was provoked, she seems to be going for the easiest target.