The effect of Didion’s literary allusion can be either helpful or alienating to the reader of her essay. If they have not ever read any of the pieces that she mentioned in her essay, then they would be very much confused about what she is talking about. But if the reader has happened to read the pieces, then they would be useful and would be considered common knowledge to the reader.
One example in the essay that Didion talks about is “self respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about.” She is implying that everyone knew about self respect, but they did not necessarily have to have it. What we make of the statement about committing adultery and “courage of our mistakes”, etc., is that we could have self respect one way or another. We could have it by not admitting that we did something wrong and running to someone to tell them what we did and asking for them to show us pity and for forgiveness. We could also have self respect by admitting to our mistakes but understanding the anger and disappointment that is directed to us from it, and accepting the fact that we did something wrong.
Her statements about self respect being a discipline and so forth are connected to writing and things of the like because you have to develop your writing skills. You have to learn about the subjects you write about and you have to work yourself to have those good writing skills, just like you have to work yourself to have the good self respect that you gain through a lifetime of experience.