Like most things with “girl” in the title, Anthropology of an American Girl isn’t a story for those who still love their American Girl dolls. Actually, I’m not sure it’s a story for anyone. Hilary Thayer Hamann wrote Anthropology as—you guessed it—an exploration of the life and emotions of a young, American woman. The novel follows Eveline from her last year of high school through earning her degree at NYU. And while she’s young, attractive, and intelligent, Eveline’s miserable.
Admittedly, lots of bad things happen to her. Some of it isn’t Eveline’s fault—miscarriage, absent parents, and a terribly broken heart. But surely she can be held responsible for her drug and alcohol abuse. Worse is her tendency to be attracted to the unscrupulous sort of men—she wonders “Perhaps all men fall under the spell of their perversions when given the chance.” Eveline gives them the chance.
Like J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Eveline is refreshingly blunt. Also like Salinger, Hamann allows Eveline to skip around and present her story in a painful stream of consciousness. But Salinger kept Catcher in the Rye fairly short, less than 250 pages. Anthropology is twice that, and far more wretched.
There’s nothing wrong with giant novels about unhappiness. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is over 500 pages on a murderer, his self-punishment, and his redemption. But Hamann’s broken hearted twenty-year-old isn’t as relevant or relatable as Dostoevsky’s murderer of the 19th century. And that should be startling.
Perhaps I’m alone in my happiness, but I’m a young woman, and I’m not nearly as miserable as Eveline. Like her, I’ve had a broken heart. Like her, I’ve experienced the terrifying feeling that I am incapable of escaping my own misery. Yet I’ve never been so upset for so long as Eveline. And I think most of the women my age feel the same way. It might be cruel to say so, but Eveline is annoying in her misery. Perhaps Hamann intended Eveline to encourage young women experiencing serious depression, but I’m not sure how 500 pages of “a life of dispossessed unhappiness” could help anyone.
Call me old fashioned, but I follow the Sir Philip Sidney school of literary theory. I believe literature should help people discover what is good; it should lead them to think. Hamann has led me to think that I never want to be like Eveline, which would upset me, if Hamann had successfully established her as the paradigm of young American women.
There are some enjoyable parts of the novel. Hamann’s writing can be beautiful, if unconvincing in its sophistication. Eveline states that “I liked the rain and the changes it wrought. Nothing is worse that the mixture of boredom and anticipation, the way the two twist together, breeding malcontentedly.” “Malcontently” is so rare a word that spell check doesn’t recognize it. “Wrought” isn’t exactly colloquial, either.
The high vocabulary would be acceptable and even enjoyable, if it weren’t intertwined with boring sentences of the early-readers variety. On the same page as her malcontentedly rant, Eveline explains that “Her left foot and my right foot were touching. They were the same size and we shared shoes.” I borrow from my high school English teacher when I claim that a writer can use high style or low style, but the two shouldn’t be combined. Emulate Hemingway or emulate Shakespeare, but don’t try both at once.
There are glimmers of hope for Eveline. She describes a figure in her painting: “Despite her imprisonment, she clings to the idea of freedom, so she is faithful. She reminds me that faith is better than hope. Hope is blind expectation; faith awaits nothing.” I can almost justify reading the novel for moments of beautiful understanding like that. But reading Anthropology of an American Girl is like wading through knee-deep mud: don’t do it. Read Dostoevsky instead.
Adventures of a College Student 