When Girls Become “Guests”: Searching for a Lost Self in The Girls

When Girls Become “Guests”: Searching for a Lost Self in The Girls

Flipping through the pages of Emma Cline’s The Girls, I could almost hear the hot wind blowing through the California wilds of the 1970s. Fourteen-year-old Evie stands at the edge of a park, like a rogue planet about to break from orbit—until a group of hippie girls enters her view. Their skin glistens with sweat, hair tangled with bits of grass, the curves beneath their tattered clothes radiating something dangerously alluring. As they pass by, the air in the playground thickens: “The mothers turned to look for their children. The women reached for their boyfriends’ hands.” My heart clenched—I knew then that Evie, and all of us watching her, were about to fall into the void.

Inspired by the infamous Manson Family, Cline’s novel doesn’t retell a true-crime saga. Instead, she peels back the rarely examined interior of the story—the girls at the center of the violence, not just as murderers or victims, but as guests longing to be seen. Drifting through broken homes and indifferent institutions, they end up surrendering their bodies and souls to Russell’s cult-like commune.

A Dangerous Playground: When Freedom Becomes a Cage

At first, the farm appears like a warped utopia. Russell preaches “love and sharing” with moist eyes. The girls pass around wine, joints, and men. Naked bodies dance by bonfires like part of some primal religion. The night Evie loses her virginity is devastating: the dry hay scratches her back, Russell’s breath smells of decay, and the sounds of girls laughing echo in the distance. She smiles through the pain—because Russell is charismatic, but even more because Susan (based on real-life Manson follower Susan Atkins) is watching.

Cline captures the mechanics of psychological manipulation with venomous precision:

Hunger as Devotion: The girls fight over half-rotten fruit, starving themselves in a ritual of purification.

Corruption of Language: Russell calls violence “baptism,” and betrayal “awakening.”

Body as Territory: When Evie gets her first period, Susan wraps her in a rag and says, “Now you truly belong to the land.”

Most chilling is the makeup ritual before the murders. The girls apply bright red lipstick, line their eyes with burnt charcoal, braid one another’s hair—giggling like they’re heading to prom instead of a slaughter. Evie, sick with fever, is left behind in the barn. Through a crack in the wood, she watches them walk toward the halo of car taillights, knives in hand—the red dissolves in her eyes, spreading into a sea of blood.

Prisoners in the Mirror: A Quarter-Century Later

The novel unfolds in a dual timeline. Decades later, Evie is middle-aged, staying in a friend’s spare room while a young couple lounges on her sofa—“so many blooming girls,” she notes. Memory crashes over her like surf: once, she was one of those girls; now, she’s a guest in her own life.

This is where Cline’s prose turns luminous:

“Susan and the others will always exist for me; I believe they’ll remain in my life forever, hovering behind the ordinary scenes, winding down highways, strolling along parks.”

Later, Evie finds an old prison photo of Susan. The once-feral panther of a girl has aged into a woman with swollen eyelids. Evie vomits into the sink. In that moment, she understands: they were all chewed up and spit out by the very era that promised them freedom. The Summer of Love birthed the dream of communal living, but no one warned the girls that freedom requires consciousness—and a price.

The Girl Inside Us: Finding the Owner of the Room

When I closed the book, the blood-orange California dusk had imprinted itself on my retina. I recalled an interview in which Cline said: “The stories I heard always centered the men. I was always more curious about the women.” She tears through the hypocrisy of patriarchal narratives: society condemns girls for killing, but never asks who killed their souls first.

Evie’s tragedy—and that of many girls—is this: when the world tells them “your body is land waiting to be claimed,” men like Russell arrive with the plow. The novel’s most damning line rings like a bell:

“In this world, simply being a girl is enough to keep you from believing in yourself.”

Last year, I passed a high school and saw a group of girls crouched by the fence, sharing cigarettes. One pulled up her sleeve to show fresh cuts. The others let out admiring gasps. I nearly ran over to grab her hand—like I wanted to grab Evie’s at fourteen. But maybe the real question is: Why does a girl’s loneliness so often become nourishment for monsters? When family and school fall silent, the Russells of the world become the only ones still preaching.

Every girl deserves a room of her own. One that doesn’t charge dignity as rent, or demand her soul in exchange for warmth. And when the wind blows through that empty doorway, she should hear her name echoing back—not as someone’s daughter, not as someone’s follower, but as the rightful owner of her own story.

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