Social Pressure Exposed In Everything I Never Told You

Pressure set out by society can take a toll on someone's mentality and their relationships with others. In “Everything I Never Told You” by Celeste Ng, she utilizes Lydia, James, and Marilyn to address how societal, academic, and gender pressures affect their way of life and their family dynamic. During the whole novel, James feels a lot of societal pressures causing him to feel different and ignore his family. As the novel moves forward the readers find out Lydia is confronted by a lot of academic pressure from her mom resulting in not being able to make her own choices and live her life. The gender pressure society has put out makes Marilyn feel as though her dreams are unfulfilled and she takes that out on her daughter. Ng uses societal,

Lydia is talking to her mom about a science camp and when she asks if she had wanted to do it, Lydia notices her mom waiting for her answer anxiously. She thinks the only choice is to agree and make her mom happy not caring about her feelings. “Only if you’re interested," she told Lydia, every time. ‘Only if you want to.’ She meant it, every time, but she did not realize she was holding her breath. Lydia did. Yes. Yes. And her mother would breathe again ” (Ng 159). This conversation clarifies how Lydia truly feels about her mother's pressures put on her. At the beginning of the novel when Marilyn leaves she makes a private promise to herself about how she will respect and do anything her mother wants her to do. This moment illustrates one of the times Lydia had to put her true feelings aside to make Marilyn happy. Lydia constantly tries to fulfill the expectation made by her mother. Lydia noticed whenever her mom asked her if she wants to do extra homework or things to do with school she held her breath making Lydia feel pressured to say yes or else something bad will happen. Using the constant repetition of the word yes gives the readers a type of sympathy for Lydia because the readers can see how Lydia feels but Marilyn doesn't think of anyone but herself. Ng added the sentence “Yes, she said, every time.” to add more evidence to how Lydia tried to fulfill Marilyn's dreams but was not able to live her own life and do what Lydia herself truly wanted. After this point, she starts to have very strong bad feelings toward her mother and how she treats her. This leads to the downfall of their relationship with each other and Lydia's relationship with Nath. This was a very needed moment because it brought to light how Lydia was never able to truly feel herself and was never able to