In this portion of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Rachel is truly making an effort to hide her real self. She mentions two different kinds of feelings at the beginning of the novel: the “new girl” feeling, and the “girl in a new dress” feeling. This distinction between the two is very important because the “girl in a new dress” feeling applies to the old Rachel, while the “new girl” feeling is all about the new Rachel. At the beginning of the book, the old Rachel is still stronger than the new. She has not had much time to build up this new persona, which is why her new girl feeling had completely disappeared when the puddle water splashed on her. She continues to build up this idea of herself as a “new girl” throughout the rest of the reading.
This new Rachel is her public self: the one who is visible to the rest of the world. She keeps the old Rachel buried deep beneath layer of protection, like the promises she has made to herself about not feeling sad, and being okay. I think she wants to hide her true self because there isn’t anyone that she feels comfortable enough to share all of her true feelings with, or someone who won’t judge her. I feel that there is a lack of sympathy in her new surroundings. No one wants her about how she is really feeling. Her grandmother and aunt avoid talking about what happened, especially anything concerning her mor. So Rachel gathers information on who this new Rachel should be from everyone she meets, she continues build up this protection around her true self. She keeps her true emotions hidden in the blue glass bottle inside the protected part of her old self. She hides all of this from everyone because she feels the need to fit in with all of the people surrounding her in this new life. Her old self certainly didn’t fit in with all of these people’s expectations, which is what prompted her to keep her true identity and emotions locked up. It is common knowledge nowadays that keeping all of this bottled up inside can be quite dangerous, so it will be interesting to see if and how it affects Rachel through the rest of the book.
Great comments on the idea of the "new girl" we see in this section of the reading. That fact that Rachel can become a new girl seems to lend itself to the fact that race is a social concept.
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