Fern's Departure Impacts Rosemary's Personality

Sorry for posting so late, my account wasn’t letting me get into the blog. Either way, what I found extremely interesting was how Fern’s departure affected Rosemary personality throughout We Are Completely Beside Ourselves.

After Fern is sent away to Dr. Uljevik’s lab, Rosemary talks about how different life is after the experiment is over and how “no one cared anymore about my creative grammars, my compound lexemes, my nimble, gymnastic conjugations…I was just a little girl, strange in her way, but of no scientific interest to anyone” (108). She goes from being observed at all times and having everything that she says be important scientific data to being told to say one thing whenever she thinks of three. This lack of constant attention is something extremely difficult for Rosemary to deal with and the adjustment is something that ends up haunting her for numerous years.

This new way of behaving is a challenge for Rosemary and she struggles to interact with humans throughout her childhood. As a result, her best friend ends up being the neighbor’s dog Snippet. Rosemary talked about how she loved Snippet because the dog listened “to every word I said” (61). Rosemary is comfortable being a gregarious and talkative individual as that’s how she grew up acting during the experiment (when life was joyful and exciting). And even though Fern couldn’t speak back to Rosemary, Rosemary was completely content with doing all of the talking. However, she notices that her talkative personality doesn’t work with humans, as they either find her annoying or her big mouth gets her in trouble. All Rosemary wants is a person who will not criticize her for her past and someone who is willing to listen to her thoughts. She can’t find anyone in her town willing to do that, so that’s why Rosemary prefers to interact with animals. Animals will not judge her for being the “monkey girl” or for talking too much. 

Granted, Rosemary does find one friend who is willing to listen to everything she has to say. However, this boy does not speak English and never responds to Rosemary’s conversations. Once the boy learns to speak English, he runs off (like most people in Rosemary’s life) and never shows up again. Rosemary soon learns that for people to stop hating her, she needs to be stop talking. If she stops talking and annoying people, then it won’t give people a reason to hate her. In return, this silence continues her struggle with making human friends. Since she won’t socialize with people, then she will never be able to easily make friends.