In her novel Normal People, Sally Rooney exposes the hidden reasoning of our subconscious. She does so primarily by translating into clear words the murky reasoning of both Connell’s and Marianne’s subconscious. If they were real, these characters would experience their thoughts not as Rooney’s sentences but as intuitive feelings and inarticulate notions. We access their experience indirectly, through Rooney’s interpretive lens. This has two major effects. One, we understand these characters intimately. In a way perhaps that they cannot understand themselves. And two, we are reminded that we also experience internally an unending stream of undiluted thought. That this level of thinking exists and can be understood sharply through introspection and articulation is a useful observation Rooney offers us.

Another way that Rooney puts unconscious reasoning on display in her book is by having her characters make choices that seem unmotivated or arbitrary on the surface, but meaningful in effect. A minor one is when Connell and his mother Lorraine give Marianne a ride home from the grocery store. Oddly, Connell drops his mother off first. Is it a coincidence that this gives him some private time with Marianne? When Lorraine begins collecting the groceries to take them inside, Connell stops her and says he will do it later. How gallant. When the two arrive at Marianne’s, Connell declines her invitation to come in for tea. Oh, I would, but there’s ice cream in the boot. Why stop his mother from taking in the groceries then, if he knew there was ice cream? This was clearly a decision. What isn’t clear is whether Connell is fully conscious of his calculations. He could’ve avoided being alone with Marianne altogether or had much more time if we wanted it. It seems he deliberately arranged the circumstances to have some but not too much time alone.

A major example of this is Marianne’s choice to casually tell Connell that her new boyfriend Jamie is a sadist. On the surface, this is a bizarre choice. Connell did not inquire about their sex life, and he is her ex-boyfriend, not her girlfriend. Is she being cruel, trying to make Connell jealous? When Connell reacts with alarm, Marianne plays it off with a “cute little smile.” She continues, nonchalantly “Well, he likes to beat me up. Just during sex, that is. Not during arguments.” Her tone bewilders Connell. Marianne, who in the past confided in Connell about being physically abused by her father, is now casually mentioning that her new boyfriend beats her up durig sex? At this point, the reason why Marianne asked Connell out for coffee becomes clear. She is crying for help. However, it’s not clear that Marianne knows this. In her conscious mind, she might have the impression that she is being wry and somewhat amusing. She might not be ready to acknowledge her desperation she feels and the dire state of her selfesteem. But something inside her knows, and something inside of her is calling the attention of Connell, the person with whom she has been most emotionally close, to help her tend to her psychological wounds.

It does not appear that Marianne is simply trying to get Connell back or to invoke his sympathies generally. To achieve those aims she would certainly not need to go to these lengths. The choice of subjecting herself to the cluthes of a sadist is an example of what psychotherapists mean when they say a person “acts out” feelings. It’s a concept I find puzzling, but compelling. It’s almost like Marianne has an unconscious need to process the awful trauma her family has inflicted on her but she cannot find the psychological and emotional safety acknowledge and enact that need consciously. So, instead she acts it out by humiliating and degrading herself. Earlier in the book Marianne reveals the tip of the iceberg of shame and selfloathing that weighs down inside of her, beneath the surface:

I have all kinds of hang-ups. Very neurotic.

Her friend Peggy inquires further and Marianne continues, casually:

Well, I don’t feel lovable. I think I have an unlovable sort of… I have a coldness about me. I’m difficult to like.

Marianne cannot yet identify her lack of selfesteem as caused by the cruelty and violence inflicted arbitarily on her by her family. Instead, she locates the problem inside herself. She figures there is a fundamental “coldness” that belongs to her and for which she is ultimately responsible. To reflect this belief, Marianne routinely finds and lets people into her life so that they will make her feel bad about herself. Jamie is not the first. When presented with the opportunity to become closer with Joanna, a caring, responsible friend who challenges her, and Peggy, a cynical, chaotic friend unworthy of trust, Marianne picks the latter. In fact, Connell is another. The basis of their relationship is that Connell is in all ways superior and that Marianne should content herself with satisfying him in private even if he shuns her brutally in public. Indeed, part of his magnetism is that he simultaneously affirms and dismisses this Marianne’s feeling of inadequacy. His gives and withdraws affection cyclically, allowing her to experience both assurance that she is lovable and confirmation that she is not. All this is in the subtext until Marianne spells it out to him:

I didn’t need to play any games with you. It was real. With Jamie it’s like I’m acting a part, I just pretend to feel that way, like I’m in his power. But with you that really was the dynamic, I actually had those feelings, I would have done anything you wanted me to.

Marianne punctuates this point by asking:

Who wouldn’t want to beat me up?

Connell’s response is a veiled agreement, consummating the dynamic by playing his role:

I wouldn’t. Maybe I’m kind of unfashionable in that way.

It’s significant that he does not reject Marianne’s statements of selfloathing. He confirms them by not responding to them. He says he wouldn’t beat her up because he’s not into that sort of thing.

From the beginning, Connell has chosen not to address Marianne’s feelings of inadequacy. Despite how humiliating her position in their secret relationship was, he kept her there, and when circumstances threatened to reveal the truth, he betrayed and abandoned her. And perhaps this choice genuinely sprang wholly from cowardice, from fear of public rebuke for dating Marianne. But is there some part of Connell that enjoys dominating Marianne? In response to sexual flattery from her, he laughes in delight and says:

Marianne, I’m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.

Not God made us for each other. No, God made you for me. Awareness and desire for his superiority lives somewhere in Connell’s consciousness. There is a moment when it bubbles up into his conscious mind and it frightens him. In a situation where Peggy proposed a threesome Marianne said she wouldn’t enjoy it but would do it if Connell so desired, Connell becomes suddenly aware:

She comes to sit down with him and he touches her cheek. He has a terrible sense all of a sudden that he could hit her face, very hard even, and she would just sit there and let him. The idea frightens him so badly that he pulls his chair back and stands up. His hands are shaking. He doesn’t know why he thought about it. Maybe he wants to do it. But it makes him feel sick.

Connell is confronted by this intrusive thought. But where is this thought intruding from? Is it a coincidence that this occurs to him, considering that repeatedly throughout their relationship he has failed to uplift her?

The unhealthiness in their dynamic is also reflected in Connell’s apology to Marianne for degrading her in high school. He says he is really sorry, but then adds that it “wouldn’t have mattered” if people had found out about their relationship because, it turns out, it wouldn’t have harmed his reputation anyway. This strikes me as an insensitive and insolent comment. Connell should be apologizing that he didn’t have the courage to make their relationship public even if it made people think differently about him. He should be apologizing for making Marianne pay in humiliation for his gross lack of integrity. Marianne again fails to stand up for herself and instead of demanding that Connell recognize more fully what he did, she says I didn’t tell anyone, I swear to god.

Normal People implores us to examine the invisible reasoning behind our decision making. If we tune in and listen to our silent thoughts, what might we hear? What might we learn by noticing who we bring into our lives and what treatment we encourage and accept from them?

We like to think that who we are is up to us, but we already exist by the time we get around to the task of defining ourselves. The primary task is to listen. Who do we want to be? Who are we? Both are answered from within.