Chapter 3 'Orpheus': The Myth of Looking Back and What It Costs

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Otherwise, continue below.

You can always return to the book hub for context.

This page is a study companion, not a substitute for the text itself.

All claims are based on the chapter's evidence and are intended to support your own reading.

Now, let's dive in.

Summary

The chapter opens with a domestic image: mold blooming on yogurt, a sign of neglect or decay in the speaker's current life.

She immediately reflects on her body as something she has “worn for other people,” suggesting a long history of alienation from her own physical self.

She contrasts her past self with who she is now—married, with gallon bags of animal bones and corncobs in the freezer for stock, far from the concrete stairwells of her girlhood.

This new life is marked by practical domesticity: she embroiders flowers in dim colors, swims laps, and smells of bleach against ceramic, echoing her mother and grandmother.

The speaker mentions a new therapist who asked her to list compliments she would give herself on behalf of those who love her.

The only word she can summon is “resourceful.”

This moment reveals a deep difficulty in self-compassion, a theme that runs through the chapter.

She then recalls a time when she believed herself in love with Orpheus, a musician.

That love, she explains, was really a love for what she could make if she were free from what happened to her body.

Orpheus was a figure kept distant and without danger by the barriers of fiction—a safe object of desire.

She believed the work—her art, presumably poetry—would save her.

But now she has no real use for those Greek myths, with their dead girls and stories of women raped by men and animals.

The chapter shifts to her present: the door is locked, nobody is outside, and she experiences muscle cramping mid-lap in the dark blue water.

She remembers her younger mouth pressed to a flute, unable to release the breath, a symbol of stifled expression.

She liked that Orpheus was a musician, with fingers long as spring onions.

As a child, she ruined her sweaters by pulling her sleeves down to cover her hands before touching doorknobs or handling coins—a compulsive avoidance of contamination.

As a teenager, she loitered, urgently lonely, with cotton t-shirts curled at their sliced hems.

One night, on a fire escape, she accepted her first cigarette from a woman named L.

L allowed her to tell the entire story without using the real words, a euphemistic confession that avoided direct naming of trauma.

She slept for nights at L's humid little apartment, marked by a violent stain on the bathroom tile from a shattered bottle of crimson nail polish, leaving streaks like blood.

Despite having her own cleaner apartment nearby, she chose to stay there.

The speaker reflects that she can't imagine the poems that softened the hearts of gods, the poems that changed anything—suggesting a loss of faith in art's transformative power.

The chapter ends with a stark realization: all she knows about Eurydice is that she died.

Every other fact she has about Eurydice is about him—Orpheus.

This final line underscores the voicelessness of women in myth and in the speaker's own story.

Key Events

The speaker describes her current married life, including freezer stock, embroidery, and swimming.
She reveals her therapist's request for self-compliments and her inability to name more than “resourceful.”
She recalls her past belief in loving Orpheus, a musician, as a love for her potential creative self.
She dismisses Greek myths as irrelevant, citing their dead girls and violence against women.
She remembers childhood rituals of pulling sleeves over hands to avoid touching doorknobs or coins.
As a teenager, she loitered, lonely, and accepted a cigarette from L on a fire escape, telling her story without direct words.
She slept at L's apartment for nights, despite having a cleaner place nearby, and notes the nail-polish stain on the bathroom tile.
She reflects on her mother and grandmother, and her own practicality and smell of bleach.
She questions the power of poetry to change anything.
She concludes with the thought that all she knows about Eurydice is that she died, and every other fact is about Orpheus.

Character Development

The speaker undergoes a clear evolution from a child plagued by contamination fears to a married woman engaged in domestic routines.

Her childhood habit of pulling sleeves over her hands suggests an early sense of the world as dirty or dangerous, a feeling that persists into her teenage years when she loiters, urgently lonely.

Her relationship with L marks a turning point: L offers a space where she can tell her story without using the real words, a form of euphemistic storytelling that allows her to process trauma without direct confrontation.

The speaker's choice to stay at L's dirty apartment, despite having a cleaner one, indicates a desire for connection over cleanliness, a rebellion against her own compulsive tendencies.

In her current life, she has become “thick-fingered and practical,” like her mother and grandmother, embracing a domesticity that once seemed alien.

Yet her therapy session reveals a persistent lack of self-worth—she can only call herself “resourceful,” not kind, brave, or lovable.

Her rejection of Greek myths, particularly the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, shows a maturation from romanticizing art as salvation to a more cynical view.

She no longer believes the work will save her; instead, she swims laps and embroiders, activities that are physical and repetitive rather than transcendent.

The final image of Eurydice—known only through her death and her relationship to Orpheus—mirrors the speaker's own struggle to define herself outside of the men and myths that have shaped her story.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Body Alienation: The speaker describes her body as something she has “worn for other people,” indicating a lifelong disconnect between her physical self and her identity.

This is reinforced by her childhood avoidance of touch and her teenage loneliness.

Domesticity and Cleaning: The contrast between the moldy yogurt, the dirty apartment, and the smell of bleach highlights a tension between neglect and control.

The speaker's current domesticity—freezer stock, embroidery—represents a grounding in the mundane, yet it also carries a sense of futility.

Myth as Escape: Orpheus serves as a safe object of love because he is fictional, distant, and without danger.

The speaker's belief that she loved him was really a love for her own potential creativity, a way to escape the reality of her body.

Work as Salvation: The speaker once believed that her art (poems) would save her, but now she can't imagine poems that changed anything.

This motif questions the redemptive power of creative work.

Euphemistic Storytelling: L allows the speaker to tell her story without using the real words, suggesting that some truths are too painful to name directly.

This motif connects to the broader theme of voicelessness.

Death and Loss: The chapter is framed by the myth of Eurydice, who died and was lost to Orpheus.

The speaker's final line—that all she knows about Eurydice is that she died—emphasizes the erasure of women's stories in myth and in life.

Maternal Lineage: The speaker sees herself as “practical as my mother and her mother,” linking her current identity to a line of women who cope through domestic labor and resilience.
Art's Futility: The speaker's doubt about poems that changed anything suggests a disillusionment with art's ability to alter reality, a theme that resonates with the chapter's title and myth.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is pivotal because it introduces the central myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a lens through which the speaker understands her own trauma and artistic ambitions.

It establishes her current life—married, domestic, in therapy—and contrasts it with her past beliefs in art as salvation.

The chapter also deepens our understanding of the speaker's relationship with her body and her history of loneliness, setting the stage for later revelations about what happened to her.

The final image of Eurydice, known only through her death and her connection to Orpheus, underscores the theme of women's voicelessness, a concern that likely echoes throughout the book.

This chapter matters because it shows the speaker's shift from mythic thinking to a more grounded, if more cynical, perspective, and it raises questions about the possibility of self-definition in the face of erasure.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the speaker's relationship with Orpheus reflect her feelings about her body and creativity?

The speaker says she believed herself in love with Orpheus, but clarifies that this meant she loved what she could make if she were free from what happened to her body.

Orpheus, as a fictional musician, was safe because he would never touch her, kept distant by the barriers of fiction.

This suggests that her love was not for a person but for the possibility of artistic creation unburdened by trauma.

Her body is something she has worn for others, so her creativity is entangled with her physical experience.

The myth allows her to imagine a self that is free from that burden, but she later dismisses the myth, indicating a loss of that hope.

2. What does the speaker's inability to name more than “resourceful” as a compliment reveal about her self-perception?

When her therapist asks for compliments she would give herself on behalf of loved ones, she can only come up with “resourceful.”

This word suggests practicality and survival, but not warmth, beauty, or worthiness.

It reveals a self-perception rooted in coping rather than in inherent value.

She sees herself as someone who manages, who gets by, but not as someone who is loved for who she is.

This aligns with her history of loneliness and her belief that her body is for others, not for herself.

The inability to name positive qualities indicates a deep-seated lack of self-compassion, a theme that may be explored further in the book.

3. How does the image of the shattered nail-polish stain function as a symbol in the chapter?

The stain on the bathroom tile at L's apartment is described as a “violent stain” from a bottle of crimson nail polish that shattered long ago, leaving streaks like blood.

This image evokes violence and trauma, but it is also a mundane domestic accident.

The speaker slept in that apartment for nights, despite having a cleaner place nearby, suggesting that the stain—and the mess it represents—was somehow more honest or welcoming than her own sterile environment.

The stain can symbolize the ineradicable marks of past trauma, the way certain events leave permanent traces on our lives.

It also connects to the theme of cleaning and contamination: the speaker's childhood avoidance of touch and her current smell of bleach contrast with the stain's persistence.

The stain is a reminder that some things cannot be cleaned away, just as the speaker's past cannot be erased.

Navigation

Previous chapter: Chapter 2 Summary
Next chapter: Chapter 4 Summary
Back to Book Hub