Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

“My phone doesn’t ring often—it makes me jump when it does—and it’s usually people asking if I’ve been mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance. I whisper I know where you live to them, and hang up the phone very, very gently.” 

Eleanor’s solitary lifestyle provides the fodder for a comedic moment in this early piece of narration. On the phone with a solicitor, she plays an eerie character in order to push the caller away. She similarly pushes others away, using more nuanced techniques like avoidance and an inner voice that criticizes those around her. 

“I was fine, perfectly fine on my own, but I needed to keep Mummy happy, keep her calm so she would leave me in peace. A boyfriend—a husband?—might just do the trick. It wasn’t that I needed anyone. I was, as I previously stated, perfectly fine.” 

Although Eleanor lives independently and claims to be content, she hears her Mummy’s biting disapproval haunting her at every turn. Her fixation on Johnnie Lomond proves a response to this trauma, which also informs the extraordinary measures she takes to win the musician’s heart. 

“She looked closely at me, as so many people had done before, scrutinizing my face for any traces of Mummy, enjoying some strange thrill at being this close to a blood relative of the woman the newspapers still occasionally referred to, all these years later, as the pretty face of evil.” 

Social worker June Mullen gazes at Eleanor with a familiar pity and morbid curiosity that Eleanor resents. Eleanor obscures the truth of the fire and its lingering damage, protecting herself from outsiders and the darker recesses of her own mind. This moment also highlights Eleanor’s deep fear of becoming her villainous Mummy.