Who is Sally Rooney?
Born in 1991, Sally Rooney is a well-known contemporary Irish writer. Her works delve into themes such as relationships, identity, and social issues. Rooney's writing is distinguished by its reflections on contemporary life and her illustration of humorous conversations that people could have in their lives. She became well-known for her first book, Conversations with Friends (2017), and even more so for Normal People (2018), which became a hit television show.
What is Normal People (2018) about?
Normal People follows the life journeys and strange relationship between its two central characters, Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron, who both are from the same little Irish town. The story starts when they are in high school, where Marianne is viewed as an outsider and unpopular teen while Connell is popular and liked by everybody. In spite of their differences, they develop a relationship that they hide from the rest. However, their relationship eventually develops into a complex, long-lasting love that persists even further on in their respective lives. The book follows their lives as they attend Trinity University in Dublin for college, where they find each other once more and encounter obstacles related to love relationships, respective social class, and personal development. Rooney examines how their relationship shapes their unique personalities and how they deal with the highs and lows of friendship and love throughout the entire book.
Most important quotes of the novel:
- "Marianne has never been with anyone in school, no one has ever seen her undressed, no one even knows if she likes boys or girls, she won’t tell anyone. People resent that about her, and Connell thinks that’s why they tell the story, as a way of gawking at something they’re not allowed to see" (pg. 10): This quote emphasizes the social pressures that women face with respect to sexuality and visibility. Marianne’s choice to keep her sexual preferences private generates resentment, mirroring the discomfort others feel toward women being autonomous and impenetrable. It highlights how society strives to control women by requiring transparency regarding their bodies and desires.
- "She sits at her dressing table looking at her face in the mirror. Her face lacks definition around the cheeks and jaw. It’s a face like a piece of technology, and her two eyes are cursors blinking. Or it’s reminiscent of the moon reflected in something, wobbly and oblique. It expresses everything all at once, which is the same as expressing nothing. To wear make-up for this occasion would be, she concludes, embarrassing." (pg. 12): Marianne’s reflection on her appearance demonstrates a clash between the beauty ideals of society and her personal self-acceptance. By opting to go without make-up, she is rejecting the notion that women should embellish themselves in order to be validated.
-"He seemed to think Marianne had access to a range of different identities, between which she slipped effortlessly. This surprised her, because she usually felt confined inside one single personality, which was always the same regardless of what she did or said. She had tried to be different in the past, as a kind of experiment, but it had never worked. If she was different with Connell, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but in between them, in the dynamic. Sometimes she made him laugh, but other days he was taciturn, inscrutable, and after he left she would feel high, nervous, at once energetic and terribly drained." (pg. 15): This passage highlights the difficulty that many women experience in expressing their complex identities within the confines of society. Connell sees Marianne as adaptable and able to shift identities, but she feels trapped in just one identity. This tension reveals the pressures women face to conform to different expectations and norms.
-"Marianne sometimes sees herself at the very bottom of the ladder, but at other times she pictures herself off the ladder completely, not affected by its mechanics, since she does not actually desire popularity or do anything to make it belong to her. From her vantage point it is not obvious what rewards the ladder provides, even to those who really are at the top." (pg. 25): Marianne demonstrates an awareness of her social positioning and the pointlessness of adhering to social norms that frequently value popularity and acceptance over authenticity. Women are conditioned and expected to search for social approval, exposing their internal conflict against external validation.
-"She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life." (pg. 35): Recognizing the start of her life marks a departure from past repression, embodying feminist ideals of personal reclamation and empowerment.
-"He felt a vast rush of love for her, love and compassion, almost sympathy. He knew that he belonged with her. What they had together was normal, a good relationship. The life they were living was the right life." (pg. 121): This expression of love illustrates the potential for healthy, fulfilling relationships grounded in mutual respect, where people can thrive and support each other's growth, contrasting with the toxic dynamics that Marianne has experienced throughout her life in other relationships. This toxic relationships and power dynamics are seen in the following quote, in a relationship she forms with a photographer in which she partakes in sexual experiences in which she is the "submissive":
"Sometimes after sex Lukas takes a long time before he lets her get in the shower, just talking to her. He tells her bad things about herself. It’s hard to know whether Marianne likes to hear those things; she desires to hear them, but she’s conscious by now of being able to desire in some sense what she does not want. The quality of gratification is thin and hard, arriving too quickly and then leaving her sick and shivery. You’re worthless, Lukas likes to tell her. You’re nothing. And she feels like nothing, an absence to be forcibly filled in. It isn’t that she likes the feeling, but it relieves her somehow. Then she showers and the game is over." (pg. 134)
-"She spent much of her childhood and adolescence planning elaborate schemes to remove herself from family conflict: staying completely silent, keeping her face and body expressionless and immobile, wordlessly leaving the room and making her way to her bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her." (pg. 138): In this quote we see how social conditioning leads women to suppress their needs and desires for the sake of family harmony, highlighting the themes of emotional duty and invisibility many women expeirence throughout their lives.
- "Her body is just an item of property, and though it has been handed around and misused in various ways, it has somehow always belonged to him, and she feels like returning it to him now" (pg. 164): This quote shows how women’s bodies are battlegrounds in romantic relationships, as they are objectified and treated as properties. It illustrates the difficulties women encounter when trying to regain control over their own bodies.
Food for thought: Last remarks upon the complex relationship the main characters have in the novel:
-"How strange to feel herself so completely under the control of another person, but also how ordinary. No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, 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." (pg. 182)
-"She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another" (pg. 184)
Connection betweeen The Bell Jar and Normal People:
-"Almost no paths seem definitively closed to her, not even the path of marrying an oligarch. When she goes out at night, men shout the most outrageously vulgar things at her on the street, so obviously they’re not ashamed to desire her, quite the contrary. And in college she often feels there’s no limit to what her brain can do, it can synthesise everything she puts into it, it’s like having a powerful machine inside her head. Really she has everything going for her. She has no idea what she’s going to do with her life." (pg. 64)
This is an important quote that reminded me of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, as both works show the ambitions of their respective protagonists in the context of patriarchal limitations. Marianne acknowledges her own intellectual potential and the countless opportunities available to her, but she is subject to constant objectification. This is also seen in Esther Greenwood, who battles for independence in the context of social demands. There is a duality in women’s lives: the desire for self-fulfillment and the burden of conformity. Both protagonists must fight to find their own identities and individuality, and strive to be able to be autonomous and form their own decisions.
Works Cited: Rooney, Sally. Normal People. London, Faber & Faber, 28 Aug. 2018.
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