ethical caine vinnel / sun bleached flies

today i will b posting an in-depth look into the song sun bleached flies by ethel cain!! let me j begin by saying i think hayden is a genius <3

this is gonna be written for people who already have a general understanding of preacher's daughter lore, but u can still read it if you're interested. if u haven't listened to it, i really really recommend! with that, let's begin :3

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"Sun Bleached Flies" begins with Ethel comparing the women in her community to sun bleached flies: they dream of getting out but simultaneously are unable to leave. When I say "getting out" I'm moreso referring to escaping abusive relationships or gender roles rather than a physical place. One of the things I love about this album is that Hayden challenges stereotypes and assumptions about the American South, so I don't think she's trying to say the location is the problem. Instead, she uses the metaphor of flies trying to leave a physical place to represent a larger psychological barrier for these women. Like flies trapped in a windowsill, they think they should be able to leave  at any time, as they can clearly see what lies beyond. However, the glass keeps them back, and thus, they are trapped. Being stuck this way is killing them, but they have no other options. This is not a critique of the mothers in her community, nor her own mother, it's simply an observation, one that Ethel even relates to on some level, as this dichotomy of wanting one thing and doing another is described through Ethel's lens after this first verse. Even though she herself leaves the town (a potential attempt to avoid these women's' fate), she is still trapped in this cycle of cognitive dissonance. This further explains how the place itself is not the problem; it's the harmful ideas society ingrains in them that these women must escape, and this metaphor combined with Ethel's experience makes it seem near impossible.

The next verse gives us a look into the mental blocks Ethel runs into. She voices she would give anything to be in church, hearing the choir sing "so heartfelt" that "God loves you / but not enough to save you" (a line which in and of itself is another demonstration of irony). Ethel longs for this false hope; she logically knows God isn't going to help her escape from Isaiah or her father or any of the other terrible men in her life. After all, this song takes place after her death, she's seen it first-hand. Despite this, she still longs for the comfort it brings. She goes back and forth between these two feelings of faith and feeling the need to take matters into her own hands.

          Direct example annotated:

           I've spent my life / watching it go by from the sidelines

                       ✰ Ethel admits lack of ever interfering with fate/God's plan

          And, God, I've tried / But I think it's about time I put up a fight

                       ✰ Ethel pledges to step in / take control of her own destiny

         But I don't mind 'cause that's how my daddy raised me / If they strike once then you just hit           'em twice as hard

                       ✰ Ethel seemingly affirms she's prepared to do so, but taken in context, this line                            comes off as her trying to convince herself to be confident enough to. Part of me                            wonders as well if the reason she struggles to stand up for herself is due to                                    transmisogyny. Being raised as a "man" she was conditioned by her father to be                            "tough". Conversely, the women in her community are trapped and accepting of                              their fates due to misogynistic gender roles, and I wonder if Ethel, subconsciously                          or not, believes that standing up for herself makes her less of a woman.

          But I always knew / that in the end / no one was coming / to save me

                       ✰ Ethel voices that she's aware of the fragility of her faith

          So I just prayed / and I keep praying / and praying / and praying

                       ✰ This action of praying, an attempt to save herself that she said she knows won't                          work, backtracks on all of this and demonstrates that she is stuck in a loop of                                contradictory thinking

The next line that absolutely breaks me is "If it's meant to be / then it will be / I forgive it all as it comes back to me." There are so many ways to interpret this line, and I think that's purposeful, again showing irony. Here are the ways I've interpreted it:

1. Acceptance of God's Plan - Looking back on her life, she decides that fate is fate. She forgives the bad things that have happened to her as she begins to remember her life post-death. Which, if you think about it, is pretty fu/cked up, because it shouldn't be meant to be that she gets (TW: SA) p*mped out, r*ped, and c*nnibalized. Those things shouldn't be accepted as inevitable, a God should stop them.
2. Blames Her Sins on Her Death - Ethel blames herself for doing "bad things" like k*lling her abusive father, and that's why these bad things that happened to her are "justified" (again, this is also fu/cked up, no one deserves those things).
3. Blames Lack of Action for Her Death - Ethel regrets not taking action to get help, instead relying on a God she knew logically she didn't trust to save her. However, this line shows radical acceptance (DBT has seeped into every fold of my brain sorry) of the path she was on leading up to her death. It's over now, there's nothing she can do, and she forgives herself. The good ending!

I like to think, since this line is repeated, that it shows a progression of thoughts as she processes her past and her death.

At the end of the song, we see Ethel name what we've seen this entire time, that she holds conflicting beliefs. She knows, at least in her death, that her thoughts versus actions didn't always line up. Using her relationship from "House in Nebraska" as an example, she sings "I can't let go when something's broken / it's all I know / and it's all I want now". The women in her town can't let go of their broken families, ideas about gender, or religion. Ethel wanted so badly to escape the cycle; she saw their pain and generational trauma and wanted something different, so she left and "could never go back home." But, she still holds that pain, ("the more it hurts / the less it shows") and it still affected her relationships and religion that she also couldn't let go of. The charming way she describes Isaiah while he eats her in the proceeding song/final track "Strangers" shows that she never really lets go of this way of thinking, and that's the saddest part of "Preacher's Daughter."

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oki there it is! hopefully that all made sense, i kind of just wrote it in a flurry of words last night because i think these thoughts every time i hear this song lol. let me know what you think in the comments- happily accepting questions, criticism, and other interpretations :)