Bright Young Women

“Some of us die early and inconveniently and there is no way to predict it if you will be next, and before you know it, mourner and comforter are staring dead-eyed into the abyss.”

Pamela reflects on what her traumatic experiences have taught her and why she often makes people uncomfortable. Rather than building suspense, the novel foregrounds Pamela’s impressions of a terrible experience and shows the grim acceptance that she eventually feels.

“I have since come to loathe the day most people look forward to all week, its false sense of security, its disingenuous promise of freedom and fun.”

Pamela thinks about her lingering dislike of Saturdays, the day on which the murders took place. Her thoughts shows how she never felt innocent or fun-loving after the attack, because she could never truly feel safe again. Pamela was a young woman when the murders occurred, but she lost her sense of youthful innocence and joy.

“I thought we needed to start cleaning up the bloodstains Jill had left on the carpet before they set, and this made absolute sense to me at the time.”

This quotation describes Pamela’s immediate reaction after seeing her friends’ gruesome injuries. She’s in shock and unable to process the situation, which conveys how traumatic it is. In her state of shock, she defaults to competence and order, which shows what she values and what she thinks is expected of her. Pamela’s stunned reaction of fixating on cleaning the house shows both the social conditioning of young women into domestic norms and her instinct to try to resolve problems and restore order.