The Rose-Scented Edith Mikaila Smith's Anointed With Oils

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The Rose-Scented Edith Mikaila Smith In today's world, "image" seems to be the most important element that impacts our lives. Often, when we attempt to portray someone or something we are not, we are faced with misunderstanding and failure. In the short story, "Anointed With Oils", Alden Nowlan, introduced Edith, who was ashamed of her past. Trying to escape the disgrace of her family and her home, Edith moved to a boarding house, where she attempted to conform by dressing and acting like royalty. Despite her efforts to blend in, she went too far and other people saw her as being conceited. Edith's dreams of being a beautiful movie star blinded her from seeing what she…show more content…
Eddie felt humiliated about where she was raised, she didn't want to be associated with the "scandals" that belonged to the shacks north of the creek. She believed that, since she grew up in the shacks, she was worth less than the next person. Edith was embarrassed by her drunken father, even though none of his actions were ever her fault. Her mother, a "hallelujah-shouting fool" who preached, but never actually went to church, was also a huge contributor to the way Eddie felt. With people tormenting her about her cousins who were teen moms, or her father who made a fool of his drunken self in public, the poor girl felt like nothing more than dirt, and she wanted to be thought of as flawless and beautiful. Edith dreamed of being a celebrity, she wished to be a perfect girl, and to live in a perfect world "in which only married women had babies, and in which men and women stayed married forever." The shacks in which Eddie grew up were less than desirable, and supposedly thought of as contemptible, by people of a higher social class. When Edith moved to the boarding house, with set meal times, she was quite ashamed to think of how people living in the shacks didn't have meal times, they simply found any food they could and ate by themselves when they were hungry. The potato-chip plant that Eddie worked at…show more content…
She thought of herself as two different people, "the rancid-butter-smelling Edith of the day shift", and "the rose-scented Edith wriggling into a party dress", she wanted to forget about the rancid butter Edith, the only Edith she wished to be was the rose-scented Edith. She wanted a "perfect" job, appearance, home, family, but she didn't realize that nothing would ever be perfect unless she made it perfect, not by changing who she was, but by changing how she saw herself and other people. Manipulating the way she talked, dressed, and acted did nothing for her. Even after spending all her money on clothes, perfume, a wristwatch, and books on etiquette, Edith still didn't fit in, all she did was make herself stand out even more than she did in the first place. In order to forget who she was, Edith created an alter-ego of herself, and tried to become that alter-ego, she never really knew the difference between what was important, and what wasn't. As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water, but apparently Edith didn't know that saying or what it meant, because she was so set on trying to impress people who didn't matter, that she pushed away her family, the ones who did matter. No matter how hard Edith tried, she could never make her fantasy life a reality. Even when she was beginning to turn her dream into real life, she doubted herself, and began to realize that she was wrong. Edith discovered that what she
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