Narrative Analysis

By Genevieve M. Nangit
February 26, 2024

The Curse

This chapter is about Norma Jeane’s perception on menstruation. It also narrate her denial of the
changes in her body and how she manage to cope wit her bleeding.

Primary sentence
A curse in the blood Fleece was always saying with a smirk you can’t escape.

But Norma Jeane inwardly rejoiced in her knowledge. Yes you can escape. There is a way! (Page
87)

Sub-primary sentence
Truly I had no pride! And no shame! Grateful for any kind word or any guy’s stare. My young
body so strange to me like a bulb in the earth swelling to burst. For certainly she was well aware
of her chubby growing breasts and the widening of her thighs, hips, “ass” - as that part of the
anatomy, when female, was called with approval and a kind of jocular affection. What a sweet
ass. Look at that sweet ass. Oh, baby baby! Who’s she? Jailbait. Frightened of such changes in
her body. (Page 89)

Supporting sentences
1 This day, a weekday in mid-September, she’d felt a strange dull ache in the pit of her Page 89
belly in gym class, in her middy blouse and bloomers playing volleyball…yet this
afternoon in the muggy heat of the gym she’d dropped the volleyball as a hot liquid
seeped into the crotch of her panties; she was dazed with a sudden headache and
afterward, changing into her slip, blouse, jumper in the locker room, she was
determined to ignore it, whatever it was; she was shocked, insulted; this was not
happening to her.
2 She’d left the locker room trembling with indignation. Shame, shame! But in God Page 88
there was no shame.

Hurrying home from school, avoiding her friends. Where usually she walked with a
small gang of girls, prominent among them Fleece and Debra Mae, today she made
certain she was alone, walking in quick tight steps with thighs pressed together, a
kind of duckwalk, the crotch of her panties was damp but the hot seeping in her loins
seemed to have stopped she’d willed it to stop! refused to give in! Her eyes lowered
to the sidewalk not-hearing the whistles and calls of the boys.
 Narrative Analysis
By Genevieve M. Nangit
February 26, 2024

3 Craving an aspirin. Just one aspirin. Page 89

The nurse in the infirmary routinely gave out aspirin if you were sick. When girls
had their “periods”. But Norma Jeane vowed she would not give in.

It was a test of her faith, a trial. Had not Jesus Christ said, Your Father knoweth what
things ye have need of, before ye ask him?

She recalled with disgust how her mother had broken up aspirins to put into fruit
juice when Norma Jeane was just a little girl. And out of her unmarked bootleg
bottle a teaspoon or two of “medicinal water” - vodka, it must have been - into
Norma Jeane’s glass. When she was a child of three - or younger! - too small to
defend herself against such poison. Drugs, drink. The way of Christian Science was
to repudiate all unclean habits. One day she would denounce Gladys for such cruel
practices against an unknowing child. She wanted to poison me as she poisoned
herself. I will never take drugs and I will never ever drink.
Norma Jeane, normally so docile and unassertive, shocked Edith Mittelstadt with her Page 90
angry tears. Why was her nasty mother, her sick mother, her nasty sick crazy mother
allowed to ruin her life? Why was the law so stupid, keeping her under the thumb of
a woman in a mental hospital who would most likely never get out? It was unfair, it
was unjust, it was only because Gladys was jealous of Mr. and Mrs. Mount, and
hated her. “And after I prayed,” Norma Jean sobbed. “I did like you told me and
prayed and prayed.”

Here, Dr. Mittelstadt spoke severely to Norma Jeane, as she might have spoken to
any orphan in her charge.

Reference
“Blonde” by Joyce Carol Oates. 2000. 4th Estate: London, UK.