Esther Greenwood and Doreen's relationship

Esther Greenwood and Doreen’s relationship is a shifting intimacy built from fascination, complicity, recoil, and care. Doreen first gives Esther the feeling of being singled out from the other girls; after Doreen’s drunken collapse, Esther tries to divide herself from her, but the bond does not disappear. Doreen’s later tenderness and Esther’s desperate calls for her during Marco’s assault expose the relationship’s central contradiction: Esther disavows Doreen as a model while continuing to experience her as an ally and a possible refuge.

Attraction and complicity

In New York, Esther feels that her first major chance is slipping away, and identifies Doreen as one of her troubles. The attraction is not merely to Doreen herself but to the life she seems to represent: Doreen comes from a fashionable Southern college, and the story she tells about matching pocketbook covers and dresses suggests to Esther an elaborate, decadent world. Esther is drawn to that world even as she judges the other girls for seeming bored by yachts, international travel, and wealthy men.

Doreen, in turn, singles Esther out. At the conference table she sits beside her and whispers sarcastic remarks about visiting celebrities, making Esther feel sharper than the others. The intimacy is selective and conspiratorial: Doreen’s humor turns the public room into a private audience of two, and Esther enjoys being the person in whom Doreen confides her jokes. Doreen’s one criticism of Esther’s habits is that she bothers to meet assignment deadlines, a small sign of how readily Doreen treats conventional obligations as dispensable.

That sense of alliance shapes Esther’s choices. When Lenny Shepherd invites them out and Doreen refuses to go unless Elly comes, Esther recognizes that Doreen has adopted her assumed name and included her in the plan. Esther agrees to go along, partly because she wants to see as much as she can. Her curiosity about other people in crucial situations is already part of the bond: Doreen’s company offers both entry into unfamiliar experience and a companion with whom Esther can watch it unfold.

The drunken collapse and attempted break

The relationship turns when Esther brings the heavily intoxicated Doreen back to the hotel. Unable to carry her down the hall, Esther decides to lower her onto the green carpet and leave her outside the locked door, imagining that Doreen will wake and return sensibly to her own room. Instead, Doreen moans, pitches forward, and vomits at Esther’s feet. Her body grows heavier as she falls asleep, her blonde hair dipping into the puddle. The scene replaces the glamorous, witty companion with a helpless body Esther cannot manage or simply dismiss without seeing what has happened.

Esther makes a decision in the immediate aftermath: she will continue to watch Doreen and listen to her, but inwardly have nothing to do with her. She declares loyalty to Betsy and her innocent friends, telling herself that Betsy is the person she resembles at heart. Yet her conduct complicates the severance. Esther steps back into her room and shuts the door but cannot bring herself to lock it. The next morning she opens it slowly, still imagining that Doreen might be lying dead in the vomit. The fear and the unlatched door show that her renunciation has not made Doreen irrelevant; Esther remains bound to the scene and to the person she has resolved to reject.

Care, estrangement, and return

The relationship’s separation is not final. Later, when Esther is ill, she initially mistakes the figure at the window for Betsy. Doreen answers, “Betsy nothing, it's me.” In the dim light her face is shadowed and her blonde hair glows at the edges; Esther feels tenderness in her fingers and imagines that Doreen could have been Betsy, her mother, or a nurse. Doreen’s care crosses the categories Esther had tried to keep distinct. Esther drinks the broth she gives her, sip after sip, and feels purged and ready for a new life.

When Doreen explains that tests were done on the food left over from the Ladies’ Day lunch and that presents have arrived in a carton in the hall, Esther echoes her hollowly: “Ha!” She is relieved that Doreen is back. The lightness of their exchange does not erase Esther’s earlier decision, but it shows how quickly the practical presence of Doreen can re-establish their familiar connection. Doreen is again someone who brings news, shares a joke, and attends to Esther when she is vulnerable.

Doreen as ally and refuge

The sharpest measure of Esther’s attachment comes during Marco’s assault. Afterward, Esther says, “I want Doreen,” and repeats that she wants to go home. The longing joins a person to a place of safety: Doreen is not simply the companion Esther once admired in New York but someone whose presence stands for escape from the immediate danger and degradation. Esther’s calls do not prove that their earlier intimacy has become uncomplicated; rather, they reveal that her attempt to choose Betsy instead never extinguished her need for Doreen.

Across these reversals, the relationship resists a simple division between Doreen as a bad influence and Betsy as the friend Esther ought to resemble. Esther is fascinated by Doreen’s refusal of ordinary constraints, alarmed by her helplessness when drunk, inwardly disloyal to her, and still moved by her care. The movement between alliance and withdrawal gives the relationship its force: Doreen can be both the figure Esther tries to leave behind and the person she wants when she needs to get home.