Taking on young love across the class spectrum
Sally Rooney lets love overcome social class, at least sometimes.
I grew up in a small town. Bradenton is a town in the armpit of two idyllic places, the Gulf of Mexico and the slightly larger, more attractive city of Sarasota. It’s a town of highs and lows, short roads and multi-million dollar homes, private schools from trailers and chained up dogs.
There are elaborate beachfront properties, and a cost of living so high families struggle to afford rent or food. These same streets that host Saturday morning farmers’ markets are filled with homeless vagrants attempting to find shelter by night.
While thousands of miles of land and ocean separate them, Bradenton is not unlike the Irish county of Sligo in Dublin, the initial backdrop for Rooney’s Normal People.
Class-crossed lovers in County Sligo
In Sligo, we meet Marianne and Connell, two high school seniors attempting to navigate the turmoils of the adolescent experience. Marianne, the intellectual outcast of their teenage social world, and Connell, the well-liked, outgoing athlete.
Marianne retains a cool and calm demeanour in the face of vicious teenage apathy and vitriol. Marianne embraces her social outcast status knowing she is destined for life outside of this small town. However, she does have one friend, a secret friend: Connell, the son of the woman who cleans her family’s home.
Connell does not hold any thoughts of grandeur about his socioeconomic status, but it’s his social status that he clings to with the hopes he can befriend his way out of this reality. And, in Sligo, it works.
Marianne and Connell are adolescent archetypes. They could’ve been my classmates. Hell, I think I sat behind a Connell for all of my sophomore year geometry class.
I knew these kids; I was these kids.
Growing up in a lower-middle-class family, I can identify with Connell’s need to overcompensate within his social circle. At the same time, Marianne’s dreams of escaping the social suffocation of small-town Sligo life were my dreams in Bradenton.
Rooney has written characters I can recognise as extensions of my own experiences. Her unique brand of witty dialogue and thoughtful character-building gives us two intensely relatable young adults.
Reaching across multiple social divides
Rooney illustrates rather smartly not only the social currency that is one’s reputation, but how a social class does not define morality.
While in high school, Connell fancies Marianne. However, as she fully embraces the role of socially-awkward outcast, admitting this infatuation to friends and family could jeopardise his fragile position within the high school social hierarchy. He allows this to hinder their relationship from the start.
Upon entering college, the reader witnesses the reversal this relationship. Marianne transitions from pariah to social butterfly, finds her social footing in the academic world. The previously quiet and self-conscious teenager transforms into an opinionated, knowledgeable, and sociable young woman.
The contrary is true for Connell, who finds himself struggling to relate and fit in with his peers. Losing his friend circle and social status puts Connell in the very unfamiliar territory of social isolation. An experience that’s as humbling to read as it is for Connell to endure.
This twist Rooney employs allows the reader a glimpse at the back-and-forth of the one constant within Marianne and Connell’s relationship: the ever-changing power dynamic between them.
The power dynamic between Marianne and Connell is what the story centres around: Who has the power in the relationship, and why? In the early chapters of the story, Connell’s ability to thrive socially is what draws in Marianne. This same power dynamic switches when the pair are later in college. Connell finds himself drowning in loneliness, and Marianne reaches down from her high social status to pull Connell back to the surface.
While Marianne and Connell’s story takes place across the pond from the hometown of my youth, the young adult experience is universally relatable. Wanting to stand out while also dying to fit in, I believe, is the universal teenage aesthetic, and Rooney’s writing has painted that picture gracefully.
The long-term consequences of family politics
Let us also consider Marianne and Connell’s family units.
Marianne is from a wealthy, upper-class family. Within the story, the reader encounters her brother and mother — both of whom are abusive, verbally, and physically. Every scene Marianne is at home, the reader can taste the tension seeping between the lines.
In society, to be wealthy means problems are inconsequential; it also means having the ability to control one’s life from every aspect. When someone has a substantial amount of wealth, certain human misgivings can be forgiven or glossed over. Rooney challenges these preconceived ideas with Marianne’s background. Marianne’s experience disputes the belief that wealth or class status always equals happiness.
Then we have Connell’s mam, raising a son on pennies and grace. Rooney does such an incredible job in creating Connell’s mother. A character who would be, in most situations, fairly dismissible, becomes a character of high moral fibre in Rooney’s creation. She is a character Connell and Marianne both confide in, seek advice from, and sometimes receive painful lessons in the form of motherly insight. There wasn’t a character in the book that I cheered on along the side of more than Lorraine. She was the morally-sound character both protagonists needed.
The nostalgia of young love
Despite their wildly different life experiences, Connell and Marianne find an authentic and deep love for one another. It is a gradual love told over many pages of heartbreak, anguish, loss, and the uniquely beautiful experience of finding another person that sees your inner being and loves you for it.
Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she’s aware of this now, while it’s happening. 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.
Normal People by Sally Rooney
As an adult, I still remember my first love. He was a red-haired, freckled mess of a boy named Justin. I was fifteen. I recall feeling that my life had just begun, that someone had chosen to love me without being obligated to do so. That’s the thing about first loves. Their flames sear so brightly you will always see their light, and the burns.
Rooney’s writing is introspective and affecting. This book will reach hearts and minds across generations. The story is the first work of Rooney’s I have read, and, as her sophomore novel, I am so incredibly enthralled with her writing ability. Her literary canon is one I cannot wait to read more of.
Pick up this story if the nostalgia of young love and flawed, realistic human relationships are your “cup of tea.” They are indeed a favourite of mine.
