Masks and performed identities

Masks and performed identities organize the contrast between private feeling and public behavior in Eileen Dunlop’s account of her years at Moorehead. Her death mask begins as a deliberate exercise in concealment, becomes part of how she performs her institutional role, and acquires a new model when she encounters Leonard Polk’s expression. The motif makes composure look at once protective and costly: it helps Eileen pass through a place she finds painful, but also helps her obey its rules while remaining distant from the people those rules affect.

Formation of the Death Mask

Eileen bases her expression on plaster casts made from the faces of dead historical figures. She studies them in a library book and practices in a mirror, aiming for a face that appears calmly resilient. She calls the result her death mask. At Moorehead, the expression is a shield against misery and shame: Eileen says she is young and sensitive, but determined not to show it. Her effort to look composed is therefore not evidence that she feels untouched. It is a practiced answer to feelings she expects the institution and its occupants to expose.

The mask also extends beyond the prison. Eileen says it has repeatedly helped her avoid trouble while shoplifting, concealing her excitement and fear from shopkeepers. Her large coat and concealed sweets belong to this private life of evasion, just as the death mask belongs to her public presentation. Before visiting hours, she drinks sweet vermouth and eats mint chocolates; she remains nervous about receiving the mothers who come to see imprisoned boys, even after years of doing so. The ritual and the expression work together as preparation for a role that demands she appear steady while confronting other people’s distress.

Composure as Institutional Performance

At Moorehead, Eileen’s duties include managing visitor sign-ins, directing mothers to wait, and administering security checks. She experiences the latter as an unusually intimate part of her otherwise dull work, but the women seem scarcely to notice her. In her own account, she becomes a pair of hands carrying out a procedure rather than a person recognized by those she serves. Her death mask thus accompanies a wider performance of professional invisibility: she does the work, follows the routine, and keeps her inner life out of view.

The performance has consequences for how Eileen treats the boys and their families. She does not speak to the boys, but reads their files, police reports, and confessions. She knows that Moorehead forbids ordinary childhood activities and that the boys can be punished under strict rules. During a visit, she sees a young boy begin to cry when he looks at his mother; Randy prevents the mother from handing him a handkerchief because gifts are prohibited. Eileen recognizes that her explanation of the rule is false, yet she has enforced it. She understands that the ban on gifts keeps the boys desperate, but still obeys Moorehead’s procedures and even takes pride in following them. The contrast is central to the motif: the outward image of dutiful goodness conceals a private awareness that the institution’s rules can intensify suffering.

Other People’s Masks

Eileen’s view of masks sharpens when she sees Leonard Polk. She admires the serene, relaxed expression he wears while being brought to visit his mother, and describes it as more accomplished than her own. His face does not appear to her like her flat death mask. Nor does it resemble the threatening pose of a bad boy, or the cheerful and vulnerable manner she associates with some adults. Eileen cannot tell what Leonard thinks, and his expression gives her no clear access to his feelings. The comparison makes masking more than a single defensive habit: it is a set of different outward presentations, each of which can keep an observer from knowing what lies behind it.

The prison’s other performances further complicate the distinction between expression and feeling. The younger boys initially face the wall and present themselves as cool and unreachable when seated with their mothers; seeing their mothers’ pain, they sometimes break down. Their posture changes, but the scene does not establish that their distress was absent before. Eileen’s later reflection also acknowledges that she did not understand how deeply other people suffered. She had read the boys’ files and seen their behavior, but those forms of information did not give her an adequate sense of their experience. Her retrospective account places the mask motif beside this failure of recognition: appearances can conceal feeling, while institutional records can make people legible as cases without making their inner lives understood.

Envy, Imitation, and Change

Eileen’s masks also organize her sense of social and emotional inferiority. At Moorehead, she watches Rebecca and notices Randy’s attention to her. Eileen feels envy and assumes Rebecca is easier to love; in response, she puts her death mask back on, even as she describes shame underneath it. The mask is not simply a means of keeping strangers at a distance. It is also what Eileen reaches for when another person’s desirability makes her feel exposed.

Later, when Eileen sees herself as aged and corpse-like, she considers it absurd that Rebecca wants her nearby. On the stairs, she deliberately adopts an expression modeled on Leonard’s: contented, confident, and at ease. This is not a claim that she has become inwardly secure. Rather, the change in model shows how readily she borrows a visible identity to meet a moment of vulnerability. The book’s sequence moves from Eileen’s painstakingly rehearsed death mask, through her recognition of Leonard’s distinct composure, to her conscious imitation of him. The motif consequently links self-protection with self-fashioning: the face Eileen presents can change, but the need to manage what others see remains.