Sharp Objects

One of the most urgent themes of the novel is the exploitation of the female body and its damaging effects. Camille states:

Women get consumed. Not surprising, considering the sheer amount of traffic a woman’s body experiences. Tampons and speculums. Cocks, fingers, vibrators and more, between the legs, from behind, in the mouth. Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? Cucumbers and bananas and bottles, a string of pearls, a Magic Marker, a fist. Once a guy tried to wedge a Walkie-Talkie inside of me. I declined (204).

While Camille was sexually abused at the age of thirteen by older boys, this quote represents a deeper level of daily abuse; in particular, an unwillingly penetration coming from “tampons and speculums,” items meant to be helpful rather than harmful (204). The fact that these items are related to medicine is of importance, considering Camille’s experiences with Adora, who only demonstrated affection when forcing Camille to ingest poisons. This theme of unwanted penetration, either from men or her own mother, is the basis of Camille’s damaged psychological state throughout the course of the novel.

Camille self-harms by penetrating her skin with sharp objects. Her cutting first started at age thirteen, after her sister Marian died. But more importantly, her sister’s death was when Adora completely stopped showing Camille affection, which only ever happened when she was forcing medicine into Camille. In this way, Camille’s self-harm could be an attempt at self-love. This idea is supported when Camille talks about how she “adored tending to myself, wiping a shallow red pool of my blood away with a washcloth to magically reveal, just above my naval: queasy” (62). Because Camille only received affection or attention from her mother when she was poisoned by her, Camille’s self-harm and then self-mending is her way of recreating a feeling of love for herself. She ends up exploiting herself to deal with the exploitation she’s received from others.

Important to note is that Camille’s mother retracted any display of affection for her because she wouldn’t willingly take the poison masked as medicine that she offered. This created a guilt complex in Camille, where she willingly exploited her body to men to gain their affection. Amma is seen doing the same thing; she constantly offers herself to older men, and as a result, she gains a sense of power that her mother had previously taken away by making her sick.