Point of View

Elsewhere is told through the first-person point of view of Vera, a mother living in a secluded mountain town. The author chooses to employ this lens in order to develop an intimate relationship between the protagonist and the reader, within the narrative culture that dilutes and distorts female identity. By granting the reader access to Vera’s internal thoughts and musing, Schaitkin explores the main character’s relationship with her mother, Ruth, daughter, Iris, and herself. Vera fears that “the smallest things, so subtle they [become] visible […] only in retrospect” could be signs of her deficiencies and lead to her disappearance (21). However, her thoughts on motherhood and conscious desire to nurture her child abrade the notion that she is a bad mother. The intimacy between the protagonist and the reader also allows the audience to empathize with Vera and see her intimate struggles that she...