When Irish author Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People hit shelves in 2018 and was consequently adapted into a Hulu series two years later, it became an instant coming-of-age classic.
The story follows Marianne, a girl who grows up in a wealthy family consisting of an emotionally neglectful mother and an abusive brother. She is bullied in school by the popular kids, and feels like an outcast as a result. When Marianne strikes up romance with a popular boy in her class, Connell, he becomes anxious about his friends knowing he likes Marianne, fearing their judgement. As a result of their differing status, they hide their relationship. At first glance, it seems like another rendition of the cliche plot where the popular boy falls for the ‘weird’ unpopular girl. But Rooney turns this trope inside out and deepens it.
Connell’s anxiety and overthinking leads him to fumble with Marianne’s heart. He doesn’t ask her to the ‘Debs,’ the end of school dance in their final year of high school. Instead, he asks the more popular girl, Rachel. While this seems like a trivial plot point that has been done in some variation in many coming of age stories, Rooney complicates it when Connell’s friend Eric reveals that he and all of Connell’s classmates knew about his relationship with Marianne the whole time, and Connell realizes: “He knew then that the secret for which he had sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another person had been trivial all along, and worthless.” Rooney captures not only the internal turmoil of the characters, but the external social factors that contribute to their struggle. Connell invented a problem that didn’t exist, partly because he was scared of his intense feelings for Marianne, and partly because of his irrational anxieties.
Rooney takes the coming of age story and makes it unforgettably real and nuanced. Rooney reveals the ‘popular’ versus ‘unpopular’ hierarchy to be much less black and white than it appears in other contemporary young adult novels. At the same time, Rooney doesn’t trivialize these unspoken social rules, especially when it comes to their emotional impact.
Due to her social status, Marianne develops the negative self-perception that she is abnormal: “everyone has to pretend not to notice that their social lives are arranged hierarchically…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.” The reader gets pulled right back to high school with these lines, without being overdone or cheesy. Marianne’s view of herself and her peers is narrow and unforgiving. It’s understandable that she sees it this way, considering Connell’s wish to hide her from his friends and the bullying remarks she receives from them.
Rooney takes the high school bully character, Eric, and complicates him by revealing that his mocking comments towards Marianne are because he thinks Marianne “looks down on him.” Rooney reveals that despite how it seems, everyone is insecure during the formative years, although the way people show it (or cover it up) varies. Some become wallflowers, some become bullies, and others fall somewhere in the middle–but the hierarchy is felt by everyone. Despite being normalized, the social organization of high school is extremely bizarre and hard to fit into. So, it’s actually ‘normal’ to feel odd and out of place, as Marianne does.
Despite Marianne’s unpopularity, she doesn’t fall into the trope of “kind-hearted nerdy girl” who the popular jock surprisingly falls for. She is a deeply flawed protagonist who makes choices throughout the novel that are not necessarily ones to root for. She doesn’t fit into the box of the innocent ‘girl next door’ who is still sexy enough to appeal to the male gaze. She isn’t a two-dimensional, elusive and mysterious femme fatale whose character is never developed.
Even in young or new adult books written by women, many female protagonists are flat and uninteresting when taken out of their plot or when standing alone without a love interest to shape their story. Marianne is the exact opposite–she has a complicated psychology as a result of her trauma, and a complex relationship with her family and with herself. Her story would be an interesting one with or without Connell.
In this vein, issues of self-worth are, in one reading of the novel, the overarching topic that makes this story so unique. Marianne’s self-esteem has been beaten down by abusive family members and partners, to a point where she has internalized a view of herself not only as abnormal, but as undeserving of real love and affection. When Connell’s mother, Lorraine, tells her that she deserves better than how her son treated her by refusing to take her to the ‘Debs,’ Marianne felt “a relief so high and sudden it was almost like panic.” Here, Rooney gets at this feeling of unfamiliar territory for survivors of abuse who are so unused to having their feelings validated or experiencing care and empathy.
As the years go on, Marianne continues to self sabotage in relationships, including pushing Connell away. After they rekindle their relationship in college and date openly, when summer break comes around, Connell has to move out of his apartment because he can’t afford rent. Marianne assumes he is returning home and doesn’t offer for him to stay with her in an apartment she has no trouble paying for due to her family’s money. Connell, feeling anxious and insecure, tells Marianne she probably wants to see other people, and she misunderstands him, thinking him to be dumping her, so she agrees.
Neither of them want to break up, but due their miscommunications with themselves, they misunderstand each other, each thinking the other wants out of the relationship. Connell’s anxiety and overthinking about their difference in financial status and Marianne’s false notions about how no one, Connell included, could ever truly care for cause their temporary downfall. She hurts Connell very deeply, and he spirals into a depressive episode. Marianne is hurt as well, feeling ashamed and embarrassed. She copes by entering a relationship with one of her classmates, Jaime, who becomes verbally abusive and degrading towards Marianne.
In this way, Rooney doesn’t paint Connell and Marianne’s relationship to be something out of a fairy tale–in fact, it’s the most complicated relationship in the book, besides the ones the characters have with themselves.
Beyond miscommunications, Rooney weaves Connell and Marianne’s story of love, friendship, and mental health by exploring how power operates in relationships. She does this in subtle yet impactful ways, without being overdramatic or sensational. For instance, when Marianne opens up to Connell about her deceased father’s abuse, “It gave him a queasy feeling, to have this information about her, to be tied to her in this way.” Rooney explores the idea that to have someone be vulnerable with you is to feel ‘tied’ to them–for better or worse. Being vulnerable with someone gives them power over you, as they could potentially weaponize the information against you, or worse, victimize you further with continuing abuse.
Power is a phenomenon either adjacent to love or opposing it. Rooney shows that by falling in love, Connell and Marianne have power over each other, but they choose not to abuse it. At one point, Connell tells Marianne that she could make him do anything. Later, Marianne tells Connell that she would do anything he wanted her to do, including degrade herself or let him degrade her. This makes Connell realize the power he has over Marianne–both the power to make her happy and the power to hurt her. With the simple thought that “he could hit her face, very hard even, and she would just sit there and let him” triggers an anxiety attack where he begins to shake and feel sick. When Marianne asks him what’s wrong, he says he feels ‘weird.’
Connell’s sensitivity to Marianne’s feelings and well-being is explored through the lens of power once again. During his panic attack, he feels that his own intrusive thoughts and reactions to those thoughts control him. Ironically, he feels powerless in the face of his power over Marianne. The fact that the only description Connell can come up with to pinpoint how this awareness makes him feel is ‘weird,’ speaks to the larger message of the novel surrounding mental health.
‘Normal’ in the title partly refers to not having (or not showing) mental health struggles or trauma. Connell and Marianne can be ‘weird’ together by coming to each other for support in times of distress and being vulnerable with each other about their struggles and trusting each other with the information. This doesn’t erase their struggles, as many issues continue to arise as a result of them. But they are able to be vulnerable without worrying that the worst will happen–that either of them will be discredited or abused in any way.
Through this framing of power, Rooney delves into darker subjects such as sexual assault and abuse of power within or outside of intimate relationships. While out at a bar with Connell and his friends, a man gropes Marianne’s breast after she tells him to stop touching her, and Marianne comes to the realization: “Her breast is aching where that man grabbed it. He wasn’t joking, he wanted to hurt her.” This description highlights how sexual assault stems from the desire to overpower someone, hurt them, and control them using fear. It’s not about sex. Even though her assailant and some of her classmates were laughing, there’s no attempt to be funny, only an attempt to overpower Marianne.
While Rooney gets at the complex, confusing reality of the high school social ladder effectively, she brings the issue of what it means to be ‘normal’ far beyond grade school drama. ‘Normal’ in the title, and as a theme throughout the book, also alludes to what is and isn’t ‘normal’ in intimate sexual settings, and consequently what has been normalized for women to want as compared to men. As a result of being abused as a child and witnessing abuse in her home, Marianne feels that being overpowered and degraded is familiar.
As it is already normalized for women to be submissive (and men to be dominating) in sexual settings, Marianne enters into a series of relationships with men wherein she asks them to degrade her in bed. Marianne admits that she doesn’t enjoy it, but she feels she has to endure things she doesn’t enjoy in order for it to be true submission to another. Though wary at first, her partners easily fall into the aggressively dominant role, and eventually they come to abuse her verbally and emotionally.
Compared to her relationship with Connell, who doesn’t wish to degrade Marianne in any context, these relationships are two-dimensional in their wrongness. Her partners treat her like an object, and she does things with them that she doesn’t want to do, whether they force her to or not. This type of power in relationships is not the type of power partners can have over each other when they are in love–it is the abusive and damaging power imbalance that men often perpetuate against their partners who are women.
The ease with which these men fall into this sadistic role signals how prevalent aggression and violence towards women is. Rooney is giving a clear message that men like Connell, who feel ‘ill’ at the thought of degrading or abusing their partners, are not the norm. The objectification and degradation of women is so normalized that it is framed as a sexual preference that can be isolated from misogyny and male supremacy in society.
Rooney demonstrates how this is impossible. The only truly loving romantic relationship Marianne has is with Connell, who doesn’t find enjoyment in overpowering, degrading, or abusing her. Connell tells Marianne that he would never want to ‘beat her up’ in bed and admits: “maybe I’m kind of unfashionable in that way.” Connell’s outlook opposes that of all the other men Marianne dates. This is a purposeful choice for the story and Marianne’s development.
Sex and power are inextricably tied, and both are used as tools of oppression against women. Marianne’s desire to be degraded at all, whether she enjoys it or not, cannot be separated from the power dynamic between men and women wherein it is normalized for men to be aggressive and for women to submit in every setting, not just intimate ones.
The parallel between Marianne’s low sense of self-worth and her desire to be degraded is no coincidence either. When she’s with Connell, she feels more emotionally vulnerable, but physically safer, feeling his power over her to be real and ‘different’ due to her feelings for him. On the other hand, when she submits to her other partners, she feels she is playing a part for their sake and pretends to enjoy their abuse.
Connell’s genuine care for Marianne challenges her subconscious notions that she is not worthy of a healthy love. Marianne comes to a true understanding of love by recognizing what love isn’t. Her most toxic partnership is with a Swedish photographer named Lukas who constantly belittles and degrades her. When Lukas ties Marianne’s hands together, blindfolds her, and makes her strip half-naked in order to take pictures of her, he tells her he loves her. This is the tipping point for Marianne, as it becomes obvious that that kind of treatment isn’t love, it’s abuse.
Issues of gender and sexism are explored further wherein Connell experiences inappropriate flirting and touching from a female teacher. Connell feels that he can’t tell anyone about it, especially his friends, because they would think he was ‘bragging.’ A few years after he graduates, Connell runs into her and she tries to have sex with him when he is extremely drunk. Again, Rooney seems to take things and turn them on their head in order to reveal societal truths. Not only does this call out the dangers of toxic masculinity, but draws attention to the fact that men can and do face sexual harassment and assault.
Women are not the only victims, and men are not the only perpetrators. These heavy subjects are important for younger readers to see, especially because Rooney does not glorify a teacher-student relationship in the way other young adult stories can easily slip into. This plot point also speaks to power imbalances that Rooney keys in on. The teacher took advantage of her position of power to flirt with Connell, and took advantage of him even further when he was too drunk to consent.
This addition to the story removes Connell as a saviour character for Marianne–he isn’t the knight in shining armour who is there to rescue her from abusive men. He experiences many moments of vulnerability and is victimized much like Marianne. He struggles with anxiety and depression, and requires emotional support. Connell and Marianne switch off between who is supporting who at different points in their lives. They are on equal ground, in other words, without one having more power over the other. This is what sets Normal People apart: it shows the contrast between a loving relationship and a relationship based on power struggles and abusive behaviour, which is beneficial for young adult readers or viewers of the show.
The ending of the book is perhaps the most memorable part. Connell and Marianne don’t ‘end up together.’ Although they have learned invaluable lessons about vulnerability, power, self-worth, and communication, and have gained a true friend in the process, they each go their separate ways after graduating college.
They knew trying a long-distance relationship would be too difficult when Connell gets into an MFA program in New York. Marianne feels confident in her relationship with Connell, feeling sure of his love for her and her love for him for the first time. Unlike at the beginning, she doesn’t try to shrink herself down in order to fit in, as she did by agreeing to keep her and Connell’s relationship a secret. Her view of herself is more generous. Connell is significantly less anxious about his feelings for Marianne, and more confident in how he feels in general.
By leaving the ending open to interpretation as to whether or not Marianne and Connell will reignite their relationship sometime in the future, Rooney reminds the reader that this is just the beginning of their stories. Marianne and Connell are still young and still have much to learn about themselves, and more to experience out of life.
If Rooney had ended with the two of them walking off together into the sunset, it wouldn’t have been unrealistic, per se, but it wouldn’t have fit with the underlying message that in the formative years, things are constantly in question. Perceptions about oneself and about others, especially regarding worth and status are never stagnant and are frequently reevaluated. Despite feeling alone and ‘weird,’ Connell and Marianne’s experiences are very common.
This is what makes the title so fitting for such a darkly honest and emotional story. Everything Connell and Marianne see as abnormal about themselves–their mental health struggles, experiences of abuse, confusion about sexuality and relationships, and identity crises–are precisely what make them normal. To go further, there is no such thing as ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal.’
There are only people trying their best with what they have. Nothing exemplifies this more than Connell and Marianne’s journey discovering themselves and each other, only to end the story with several unanswered questions. Rooney leaves the reader not with a heartfelt coming of age story, but with a host of topics to consider about oneself; sexuality, gender, love, power, and social expectations.
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