Dreams
The narrator recounts, “And then there were the dreams about my parents, which I never mentioned to Dr. Tuttle. I dreamt my dad had an illegitimate son he kept in the closet of his study. I discovered the boy, pale and malnourished, and together we conspired to burn down the house. I dreamt that I lathered up my mother’s pubic hair with a bar of Ivory soap in the shower, then pulled a tangle of hair out of her vagina. It was like the kind of fur ball a cat coughs up or a clog in a bathtub drain. In the dream, I understood that the tangle of hair was my father’s cancer.” The dreams emerge in the course of the narrator’s hibernation. It is implied that they might result from the sleeping drugs: Dr. Tuttle warned her of possible side effects such as hallucinations. From the reams about her parents, the reader can surmise that she is undergoing psychological turmoil due to being orphaned. She yearns for her parents although they are dead.
Professional Misconduct
The narrator explains, “I’d been seeing Dr. Tuttle once a week, but after I left Ducat, I didn’t want to have to make the trek down to Union Square that often. So I told her that I was “freelancing in Chicago” and could only see her in person once a month. She said we could talk over the phone every week, or not, as long as I gave her postdated checks for my copayments in advance. “If your insurance asks, say you were here weekly in person. Just in case”…She never asked how my work in Chicago was going, or what I was doing there. Dr. Tuttle knew nothing about my hibernation project. I wanted her to think I was a nervous wreck, but fully operative, so she’d prescribe whatever she thought might knock me out the hardest.”
Dr. Tuttle exhibits negligence by recklessly prescribing drugs. Dr. Tuttle becomes an unwitting accomplice to the narrator's hibernation project which is supported by the drugs that she prescribes.
The theme of professional misconduct also occurs in Reva's painful sexual relationship with her boss. After Reva becomes pregnant, the boss transfers her to a different location as a way of "solving" this problem. The narrator also speculates that her boss at the art gallery is having an affair with one of the young artists whom she represents.
Healing and Self-Help Culture
Of her hibernation, the narrator writes, "Not that what I was doing was suicide. In fact, it was the opposite of suicide. My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.” The narrator sees her year of sleep as a positive and healing move in her life, an attempt to work through her grief and anhedonia. In contrast, those around her see her sleep as an act of self-destruction. Reva in particular constantly hounds the narrator over her poor self-care habits. Reva is an active consumer of media aimed towards women's self-care. Ironically, Reva's life is also a total disaster: she has unaddressed bulimia, drinks constantly, and is having an affair with her married boss. One takeaway from the book is that healing can look like self-destruction, and that self-destruction can be disguised as self-care.
