While going through Sally Rooney’s latest title ‘Normal People’ you can’t help feeling a strong inclination to draw analogy with Eliot’s The Waste Land. It won’t be unjust to say that Sally Rooney has come up with a prosaic version of The Wasteland; Connell and Marianne along with a an array of complex characters present in the novel either as their family or friends truly sum up the entire ethos of post- millennium world.
Sally Rooney has come up with a prosaic version of The Wasteland
Rooney mulls over the emotion of love in its twisted form mangled by the rise of primordial desire for violence or dominance over female lover or passive partner surfacing up from subconscious mind. Ironically, it is either glorified or mistaken for spontaneous expression of love and goes unsanctioned by pop culture of violent porn, revenge nudes,belligerent and abusive sex promoted in showbiz. The novel also unspools the tangles of love for family, blood relations and friends gone awry because of inherent jealousy or antagonistic individuality or narcissism promoted by social media platforms.
Marianne’ mother is envious of her own daughter and taunts her for being a snob who deludes herself into believing she is different and smarter than others, a gifted soul. Alan, her brother, is unabashedly violent and manhandles her throughout her school life and even later on when she is an adult. You feel appalled to read her mother covering up this flagrant display of physical aggression as ‘Sibling rivalry’. While father saves his face by being perinnialy absent from the unraveling of family thriller.
Though the exploration of love remains the dominant theme of Normal People
It’s a telltale moment in the novel exposing the impotence of modern man in capitalistic society modeled on principles of corporate connections which can’t be dented for the sake of moral choices of individual. Her lover, Connell ,who enjoys ecstatic sex with Marianne, symbolizes lack of moral strength of modern man required of him to stand up to social pressure or root for his lover. Despite feeling crushed by scruples of his conscience he dares not pick up with molesters- his own friends. In his heart of heart,he is reproachful of their abusive pranking but when it comes to action he is as inert as stone. Fear of being labeled as weirdo and a loner without any friends sucks away his courage. A simple moral choice of calling out or stopping the gropers, for his own lover-a victim, seems a dare drenching blood out of his face. Eliot ‘s lines from The Love Song of Prufrock kept rings in your head.
I am no Hamlet and Here is no great matter
Lucas whispers into her ears while belting her, handcuffed and blindfolded, ” this is love and you love it”
As the novel progresses, you are more and more convinced that Connell is a foil to Marianne. Twice in the book she looms larger as a woman with keen and acute sense of right and wrong and self- knowledge. Unlike Connell, she fathoms fully the causes of her yearnings for belonging and her self-demeaning choice of complete submission to her three lovers.
Your heart goes out to see Marianne, a promising student at Trinity college, with indepth political insight, stooping down so low to endure violence, slapping , belting during sex. In her desperate attempts to win love or feel valued cherished by lovers, she thinks either complete subjugation or bearing with violence from Jamie and later Lucas can deem her worthy of their love. Herself she isn’t a masochist at all. She thinks her unconditional surrender will satiate her male lovers’s latent desire for dominance and aggression to give boost to their crumpled manliness. Consequently. being gratified, they will love her forwho she is. It’s a pity that this morbid decision seems so worthy to her that it ups her self-esteem in her own eyes.
However, unlike Jamie n Lucas she does not equate love with violence.
The moment Lucas whispers into her ears while belting her, handcuffed n blindfolded, ” this is love and you love it” she asks him to stop and untie her. Walks out on him
There comes a neat short paragraph in which Rooney makes it crystal clear that love is untainted by violence, a pervert wish to control lover or even mindless submission from any of the lovers. Marianne mulls over, bewildered n devastated:
“Could he really do the gruesome things he does to her and believe at the same time that he’s acting out of love? Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence?”
Marianne emerges high above all other characters because she holds one simple basic value that love or friendship or familial relations exist and evolve only if you accept and value people along with their shortcomings. When Alan bangs open door into her nose and she develops a minor fracture. She doesn’t lodge a formal legal complaint or consult the doctor. From feminist point of view, Marianne’ s silence is almost criminal. As a literary critic, it touches on implausibility given the fact that story is set in post-#Metoo times awakening women to inherent dangers of silent resignation in the face of violence. And the fact that Marianne is no uncouth domesticated girl, rather well-versed in politics,Marxism and zeitgeist of her times does leave a big question mark on credibility of her character delineation. Though, later in story, she does register her protest against her abusive family, when she opts to stay with Loraine, Connell’s mom instead of her own mom.
She has not picked up with Denise her mother neither as young teen nor as an adult uni student. So much so, when Joanna exposes Peggy, Niall n other friends hypocrisy who have been slut shaming her over her nude clips Lucas somehow shared with them, she condones it. Even, Peggy ‘s rude offer of Threesome to Her and Connell doesn’t lead to a breakoff.
Over the period of 5 years,from 2011 to 2015, Marianne and Connell walk, stumble and stagger down the enigmatic path of post-millennial nuance of love. The turning point comes when both head to a prestigious uni Trinity in the capital city of Dublin. One can’t miss the brilliance of Rooney’s brand of irony, in this elitist uni Trinity, Connell, from humble background, ends up a misfit and loner. Whereas, Marianne, hailing in with her rich class reference and aesthetics is welcomed as a heartthrob. Still she stays loyal and sincere with him. Though, Connell flabbergasted and depressed with this turn of event, loses all his cool. His new girl friend Helen mocks at his Sligo accent and average looks which he has always prided himself over. Eventually, he develops complications , becomes suicidal and sees psychiatrist, regularly.
And it’s Marianne not the shrink who finally helps him recover his lost self-esteem through her unflinching support and undemanding love. Intense Social scrutiny and desire of social approval, even at the expense of intrinsic simple morality, lies at the heart of novel’s overall thesis.
What starts off as bleak and gloomy story of love, rejection, violence, is so delicately wrapped up by Rooney with a note of hope,revived and reckoned, in the same original idea of pristine emotion of love, nonjudgmental.
Towards the end, Connell gains moral strength and stature when he stands up to Alan warns him to not lay a finger on Marianne ever again. For the very fisrt time, he introduces her as his girlfriend to family and neighborhood on Christams eve. This is followed by an honest confession in private too.
These seemingly very benign, normal acts have become dares requiring valor and bravery for Normal People in post-millennial society.
It’s interesting to note that once he is manned up to his responsibility in their lovelife, she has no issues letting him go to start anew even with another girl Uni in NY away and apart from her. She is confident of herself- a recovery from past ambivalence towards self harm- for bringing out the good in him.
“No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt , she thought, go running in other directions, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not. She knows he loves her, she doesn’t wonder about that anymore.”
Normal People is a novel which leaves a powerful aftertaste and sets a train of thoughts in motion chugging on long after you have put the book down.
Core Idea: Love, whether lasts only for a while or life long, is not a destructive force but a sanguine element blaming and repairing our bruised selves.
By Seher Hashmi
Seher Hashmi is a reluctant satirist and hesitant spoken word artist and a pretty prosaic poet. Unlike and Unfollow her @midnitemusings
