“When the itch had been relieved, I pulled my fingers out and smelled them. It’s a natural curiosity, I think, to smell one’s fingers. Later, when the day was done, these were the fingers I extended, still unwashed, to Dr. Frye when I wished him a happy retirement on his way out the door”

There’s something so intriguing about a disgusting woman. Reading about a woman skipping a shower or smelling her armpits almost feels like an exotic privilege, fascinating but distant, something you don’t expect to encounter in real life. You observe her from a safe distance, somehow admiring and rejecting her simultaneously. Maybe you even put on a little extra perfume to alienate the idea of her further.

Moshfegh, an awarded novelist, specializes in the “disgusting female”. Her novels thrive off of the repulsion from the reader as you dive into her character’s demented and perverted minds. Her most popular works, including “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” (2018) and “Eileen” (2015), feature a deeply flawed, often emotionally and physically grotesque female protagonist.

“They’re definitely not like any other characters I’ve heard about”, says Vania Lindley, a friend of mine who served as my personal introduction to Moshfegh’s novels. These characters break all the rules you learn in character writing 101: A likeable character that explores a plot or emotional arch. Moshfegh throws all of this out the window in the form of messy, emotionally stunted and often mentally ill women.

In her 2015 novel, Moshfegh introduced us to Eileen: a character crafted out of blunt and grotesque honesty who can’t escape her own body, as detached as she may seem. 3 years later, the female protagonist of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” continues this tradition as a disheveled, numb, and emotionally stunted woman who tries to medicate herself to sleep for a year.

But why does she do this?

Is there anything past the need for viewer engagement?

Is there meaning in the disgusting?

“I think she’s asking us to reimagine femininity”, says Dr. Clarke, an English teacher here at Ransom Everglades, “women aren’t supposed to be yucky and hers are”. The meaning of a disgusting character also goes beyond a gendered purpose, explains Dr. Clarke, “She’s putting us in high relief. I mean, everybody goes to the bathroom. Everybody has private disgusting moments”.

Dr. Margini, another member of our beloved English department, agrees: “Moshfegh is messing with us and agitating us with her female characters especially. They’re designed to offend us, to push our buttons based on our expectations of female propriety, gender norms, and what’s decorous and acceptable for women to do”.

Moshfegh told the Columbia Spectator about her “fascination with the human body.” Through very detailed description, Moshfegh portrays the uncomfortable parts of the human body almost too vividly, using what she calls the “immediacy of disgust” to engage her readers emotionally.

Moshfegh finds engagement in different forms. While some turn away in disgust and others psychoanalyze, Dr. Margini finds humor in Moshfegh’s approach to the human body. “It’s just funny, right? The body’s been funny since the oldest recorded literature.”

“And it’s not just funny for the sake of being funny,” he expanded. “Literature that discusses the body, going all the way back to Chaucer, can confront you on a visceral level. That’s part of how the social critique works: he reminds us that we all have bodies.”

Moshfegh’s most popular novel, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” is built on a premise that completely defies traditional storytelling: A woman who chooses to sleep for an entire year. The absence of a plot in this novel is what drew me in initially.

I was surprised when Moshfegh managed to keep me completely engaged with no plot and an odious protagonist for 300 pages. The most interesting character development in the novel manages to somehow be the lack of it.

The unnamed protagonist of “My Year and Rest and Relaxation” is nothing short of the stunt of a character. She doesn’t show character development in the conventional sense: she shows no emotional or redemption arc, with the only plot movement happening when she gets coffee from the “handsome Egyptians” that run the corner bodega. Many readers see this as a lack of substance and are quick to criticize. One irate Goodreads reader describes the novel as “emotionally and thematically empty. It’s not about anything and it has nothing to say.”

Dr. Margini raised a very important question, “Well, why? Why do characters need to have complexity or growth? I think they can be crappy and stay crappy and that doesn’t harm the art.” Lindley agreed: “The lack of reaching a sort of endpoint is a message in itself.”

The Moshfegh female protagonist also carries a very important staple: a disgusting and perverted jumble of thoughts to match the apparent outside of her characters. Moshfegh’s characters don’t suffer beautifully: they rot, they stink, they push people away. Instead of offering a sanitized version of mental illness that evokes automatic pity or admiration, she leans into the ugly and selfish. In doing so, she tests the limits to whether we are willing to sit with discomfort, and to accept characters who are sick and broken without becoming inspirational.

She has faced criticism for her unusual portrayals. Some think she makes a “mockery of its own subject” in her depiction of mental health, specifically depression, in women.

Dr. Clarke stands behind Moshfegh’s often dramatic and problematic portrayals, “I think depression is hyperbolic already. I mean, that’s the point, right? It means that your view of the world or your view of your circumstances is skewed.” Lindley argued there’s no “right way” to portray mental health struggles. “It’s such a unique experience to each person. It’s not something you can generalize,” she said.

Moshfegh seamlessly creates an environment that somehow combines universal feelings of grief, sadness, purposelessness and loss with the ugly and disgustingly human moments we often choose to ignore. This effect makes it problematic and somewhat offensive for the reader to align with her characters, as relatable as they may be.

People often expect characters to be easily digestible, to fit neatly into their own morals. “I think that people want art to unproblematically confirm their worldview, so people look for characters who spout their own beliefs but have no flaws that mitigate those beliefs,” explained Dr Margini. “That’s artless. That’s propaganda. Human beings are complicated.”

It’s easy to hate a Moshfegh character: They portray our disgusting fears as a reality and reflect our most vulnerable and personal thoughts and feelings through inexcusably narcissistic and insufferable impressions. The truth is, Moshfegh threatens a reader’s pride by writing a character that thinks the same way you do but also reeks of vomit now frozen in the snow, which she spares no description of.

“That’s a little seared in my brain, I think,” said Dr. Clarke, “She’s like, actually disgusting. Things are coming out of her, and at the same time, you are so intent on following what is happening to her.”

Moshfegh serves as a sort of equalizer in a way, begging us to get over ourselves. And as disgusted as we may be, we can’t help but keep reading.

After all, we are all more disgusting than we think.