How Should A Person Be
Basic Info
- Author: Sheila Heti
- Year:
- Type: #primary1
Summary (brief)
-Sheila Heti is a pick-me-girl in some aspects:
A pick-me-girl is a slang expression for a woman who is not "a girl's girl." A pick-me-girl will do anything to be "picked" by a man, often at the expense of other women. This is complicated by Sheila's dedication to her friendship with Margaux---although it is clear that Sheila also wants to be chosen by Margaux, in other instances, Sheila made disparaging comments about women (which I think comes from her own self-hatred). Moreover, as soon as Sheila "was picked,"--when she married her husband--she immediately felt trapped, smothered, and distrustful of his intentions. Sheila wrote about how she desired marriage more than anything in the world. She thought this would be the ultimate joy of her life. Sheila's obsession with uncovering the secret of "how a person should be," is really just a manifestation of her desire to be wanted and liked by everyone around her: she even begins the book with the sentiment that she wants everyone to just know she is a genius without any of the annoying concessions that being famous comes with. In Chapter 10. Two Dresses, Sheila goes on this funny/sarcastic monologue about how she would happily serve Israel in whatever gross, sexual, humiliating way he chose. I usually enjoy "pick-me" narratives---I did enjoy this one, too---but this particular chapter was so cringe; I think because even though it was exaggerated, and a joke, it was actually true and so gross. When Sheila says, "what is there in that book anyway? What is there to be learned tonight when you could learn to suck…" (85), Is sarcastic but actually true because Sheila was in fact sacrificing her art to write sex letters to Israel.
Major Themes
- #identity
- #womanhood
- #hatingwomen
- #pickme
- #marriage/relationships/friendship
- #truthandmemory
- #storytelling
- #fate
Key Passages / Quotes
Quotes
Quote 1
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “maybe you don't think you're a person because you haven't decided what sort of person to be”
page:: 194
themes:: identity
Quote 2
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “the play my teenage boyfriend had written about me, which had somehow become my life”
page:: 193
themes:: identity
Quote 3
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I want it to answer your question--about how a person should be--so that you never have to think about it anymore”
page:: 182
themes:: identity
Quote 4
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “we don't even know what we love about a person--their intactness, their perfect intactness”
page:: 171
themes:: identity
Quote 5
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I knew I would always lose what was good. That was the kind of person I would always be”
page:: 169
themes:: identity
Quote 6
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I knew I was a terrible person”
page:: 165
themes:: identity
Quote 7
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “hadn't I always gone into the world making everyone and everything a lesson in how I should be?”
page:: 157
themes:: identity
Quote 8
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I wanted to take a different route to the one thing that would justify the ugliness inside me. I would become important”
page:: 132
themes:: identity
Quote 9
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I used to worry I wasn't enough like Jesus”
page:: 131
themes:: identity
Quote 10
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I want to be a hero”
page:: 26
themes:: identity
Quote 11
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “This was the central preoccupation of her life when I arrived, because it was the more emotional”
page:: 195
themes:: womanhood
Quote 12
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “my teacher called me a chatterbox”
page:: 94
themes:: womanhood
Quote 13
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I knew that if I said a single word, I would burst into tears...”
page:: 91
themes:: womanhood
Quote 14
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I had never before spoken to a man in such a way—admitting absolutely everything”
page:: 83
themes:: womanhood
Quote 15
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “she was just another white girl going through life with her clothes off”
page:: 74
themes:: womanhood
Quote 16
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I'll decide if you're celibate or not”
page:: 54
themes:: womanhood
Quote 17
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “this is the great privilege of being a woman--we get to decide”
page:: 30
themes:: womanhood
Quote 18
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “women always have to confirm with each other”
page:: 24
themes:: womanhood
Quote 19
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I hadn't been close to a girl since Angela broke my heart”
page:: null
themes:: womanhood
Quote 20
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “it felt like the first choice I had ever made not in the hopes of being admired”
page:: 189
themes:: desire
Quote 21
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “he gave me a lazy look that cut at my heart”
page:: 187
themes:: desire
Quote 22
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “making himself, once again, into a man you could not criticize”
page:: 172
themes:: desire
Quote 23
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “If you meet a soul mate, it's one of the most beautiful, pleasurable things in life”
page:: 163
themes:: desire
Quote 24
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I had turned myself into the worst thing in the world...”
page:: 159
themes:: desire
Quote 25
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “he was a new man every day”
page:: 105
themes:: desire
Quote 26
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “wanted him to like and trust me”
page:: 104
themes:: desire
Quote 27
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “I felt the same tenderness I always felt with him, but which I began doubting the second we were married”
page:: 191
themes:: relationships
Quote 28
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “a deep well of nothing”
page:: 188
themes:: relationships
Quote 29
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “There was not one cell in my body unsullied by what I had done”
page:: 171
themes:: relationships
Quote 30
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “Margaux and I talked minimum once, for reassurance”
page:: 95
themes:: relationships
Quote 31
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “that the thing you most fear will always present itself”
page:: 195
themes:: fate
Quote 32
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “all my life I felt no restraint from anything in my past because it literally wasn't there”
page:: 194
themes:: fate
Quote 33
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “the truth is so diffuse that our minds cannot even hold on to it”
page:: 192
themes:: fate
Quote 34
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “Why did we find it so irresistible to make ourselves into tragic figures with tragic flaws”
page:: 191
themes;; storytelling
Quote 35
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “certain objects want you as much as you want them”
page:: 39
themes:: fate
Quote 36
book:: Sheila Heti
quote:: “the benevolent operation of destiny”
page:: 31
themes:: fate
criticalquestion:: How is Truth Shaped
Characters / Concepts (if relevant)
Sheila: author avatar / protagonist; writer trying to figure out how to be a person;
Margaux: charismatic painter; performative; embodies confidence and artistry
Israel: Sheila's lover; emotionally distant; self-assured
Theory Connections
Related Texts
My Argument / Interpretation
Dissertation Relevance
How could this matter to my project?