60 pages • 2-hour read
The Favorite Girl
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Themes
Wealth as a Tool for Manipulation
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, self-harm, sexual violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and gender discrimination.
In The Favorite Girl, protagonist Demi is made vulnerable by her socioeconomic status. Her lack of resources and connections make her susceptible to the machinations of the rich and powerful. She was sold into human trafficking by her similarly disadvantaged parents and became unhoused when she escaped. This means that she doesn’t have the necessary documents, like a driver’s license or home address, to apply for many jobs. The Ivory family uses their wealth to control Demi’s body, time, labor, and marital status.
Demi feels that she has to accept the housekeeper position at the Ivory Estate because she lacks choices. She thinks, “The worst position to be in is a person without choices, because that means others can make decisions for you” (53). The Ivory family makes decisions about Demi’s wardrobe, makeup, hair, diet, exercise routine, and working conditions. Furthermore, she has to be weighed regularly and get an IUD. She is initially gaslit into believing that these kinds of rules are “absolutely customary for the wealthy” (95). Demi’s poverty leads her to accept these invasive conditions.
Demi quickly realizes that she needs to leave the Ivory Estate, but she is blocked from doing so by the wealth of the Ivory family. They can buy security cameras, buy off the police, and stage a crime scene to frame Demi for murder. Carla shows Demi stills from the footage: “According to these photos, I was guilty” (115). The Ivory Estate has lawyers as well as connections to the police to control Demi. She can’t fight back against this blackmail because she is a marginalized individual: a woman of color without a family, education, identification, or housing.
All hours of Demi’s day and night are controlled by the wealthy Ivory family. She is made to clean the cells of the imprisoned women during the day and is physically assaulted by Ian at night. There are also moments when she loses time and wonders if she has been drugged. Demi has to behave as “a happy little housekeeper and pretend to be completely content being trapped in a dangerous house with dangerous people” (162). The Ivory family’s great wealth has allowed them to construct a world of their own—one in which they are always in control and from which there is little hope of escape. By contrast, Demi’s poverty leaves her with no control over the world around her and leads her into the web that the Ivory family has built.
While she initially thinks that her work is aiding the Ivory family in making even more money, it turns out that she is there to marry Conrad. The Ivory family employs a full cleaning staff and only makes Demi clean to humiliate and control her. Ian likes to watch her and has the money not only to control Demi but also to have his estate properly cleaned. The wealth of the Ivory Estate is used to make sure that Demi becomes the “favorite girl,” or the bride of an Ivory family member. They are able to dictate who she has sex with because they have money and power.
The Horrors of Gendered Violence and Sexual Commodification
The Ivory Estate is a site where women are traumatized through having their reproductive organs, sexual lives, and physical appearance controlled. The violence used by the Ivory family includes tortures specific to people with uteruses and hymens: forced insertion and removal of IUDs, as well as demanding to see blood when being penetrated with a penis for the first time. Women are treated as interchangeable property by the Ivory family.
“Virginity” is viewed as essential for the women imprisoned in the Ivory Estate. Women must be “virgins” when they get married, as this quality is how the women are marketed. If they do not meet the requirement to bleed during sex on their wedding night, they are tortured and killed. Conrad tells Demi, “If I don’t see blood, I’ll know you’re a disgusting slut and ruined […] I’ll make sure you rot in the cages until you die, and then I’ll give my father your bones for decoration” (24). Women who don’t bleed are imprisoned, sexually assaulted, and murdered. Their bodies decompose in the peony garden, and their bones are put on a wall in Ian’s office. On their wedding night, a towel is placed under the women, and the men treat the “red-stained material like it [i]s a trophy” (365). This connects having sex with a woman for the first time with hunting, thus dehumanizing women.
Women are treated as pets to be bought, sold, and abused by the Ivory men. For instance, when Officer Tate brings Isabella back to the Ivory Estate, displeased that she wouldn’t fulfill his specific sexual desires, he is given a “return receipt” (329). Women on the Ivory Estate are not viewed as autonomous human beings but as property to be owned by men. Tate demands another “virgin” bride, which echoes how Conrad initially chose Layla then chooses Demi when he finds out that Layla already had sex. These reflected moments demonstrate how the women are interchangeable. Clients and Ivory men choose women from a “binder” (238), or the “Virgin Bride Catalogue” (321; the frequent references to these binders allude to Senator Mitt Romney’s infamous “binders full of women” comment during his 2012 presidential run). In turn, the Ivory family buys women from Trent, the human trafficker. Women being treated as possessions is central to the horrors of gendered violence in the novel.
Furthermore, the Ivory men, and the women they brainwash, believe that treating women inhumanely will improve the world. The men “actually th[ink] that they [a]re creating a better world and future through their patriarchal and misogynistic extremist views” (357). Through the “white-therapy,” Daphne and other women are convinced to agree with this ideology. She argues that women are “meant to be sacrificial” (351). Demi is able to treat other women as fellow humans worthy of empathy because she does not undergo this brainwashing. Halfway through the novel, she becomes determined to “save those girls…The way [she] couldn’t save my older sister” (188). Near the end of the novel, as she is escaping, Demi unlocks all the cells and frees the women. They are able to become subjects instead of objects once again.
The Psychological Impact of Isolation
The women imprisoned in the Ivory Estate undergo mental and emotional changes. They are subjected to white-therapy, a form of sensory deprivation that involves all-white rooms, food, and clothing. They are also isolated from sounds and each other. The intent behind this torture is to create “subservient wives for these disturbed men” (232). The experiences of the caged women can be compared with Demi’s isolating experience of poverty.
Putting women in cages, or cells, is a way of depriving them of agency. Isolated from one another and from the outside world, the women have no opportunity to discuss their experiences with anyone other than their captors. With no one to turn to for support, the women are treated more like animals than people. When Demi first hears the phrase “caged girls” (129), she thinks it refers to caged dogs. She is shocked to discover that the “caged girls…aren’t dogs. They are…girls?” (135). Demi’s assumption that the women are pets is a result of their isolation and mistreatment. The women “[a]re being forced to live like puppy mill animals” (196). They are not lapdogs in lavish homes but live in horrible conditions, such as in cold cells. This connection between women and dogs is developed by various men referring to women as “bitches,” which literally means female dogs. This degrading language is part of an intentional program meant to make the women more submissive.
Demi is horrified that the imprisoned women smile at her. She wonders, “If they were being tortured, why would they smile? Why wouldn’t they bang, bash, scream, and cry for help whenever they saw a new girl in the same space as them?” (170). The women seem to be experiencing learned helplessness; they have no hope of their quality of life improving. Furthermore, they are excited about any new stimulus due to their sensory deprivation. Faking smiles is an indicator of their trauma. When Demi witnesses Daisy smiling while marrying Mason, she thinks, “Sometimes it’s not the number of tears we shed that measure our pain…sometimes it’s the number of smiles we forge” (269). Her smile, and the smiles of the other prisoners, are a reflex to cover up their trauma and please their captors.
Demi doesn’t experience the white-therapy, but she is isolated by poverty. At the beginning of the novel, she is alone in a motel room and self-harms after being alone. She thinks, “Because I feel the fucking pain that I’m inflicting on myself, but at least…at least, I’m the one inflicting it this time” (7). It gives her a sense of control. Demi’s tendency to seek control over her own experience wherever she can find it is the trait that allows her to triumph in the end. Her isolation is painful, but it does not rob her of agency, and by refusing to give in to her captors’ demands for submission, she ultimately emerges victorious.
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