Eleanor suffers from a poor self image, three reasons that support the statement

The title character of this novels a first name with the title character of a famous song by the Beatles about all the lonely people in the world that asks where they come from and wonders where they belong. Eleanor Oliphant is one of those lonely people she comes from Glasgow but does not seem to belong anywhere. A social misfit who not only acts the part, but looks it as a result of more than a decade of an absence of any concern about her physical appearance. The scars on her face don’t help, of course. She lives alone, has a go-nowhere job, only makes it through the weekends thanks to massive consumption of alcohol and has a very strange relationship with her mother. On the other hand, she’s just found she considers husband-material.