Graphic by Isa Renée
Listen to Ava narrate this article below!
For Christmas, my best friend gifted me with a copy of “Normal People.” The soft baby blue cover page, coupled with the thin spine and the charmingly unassuming title, made the read look breezy and simplistic. However, once I finished, its pages were stained with my tears.
“Normal People” tells the story of twin flames Marianne and Connell, whose fates unfold like two plants sharing the same soil, the same soul. Their deep roots are often tugged down by the growth of the other, delicately meandering and twisting around as they try to reach the sunlight. While their love story may seem ordinary at first glance (boy meets girl, boy and girl hook up, boy hurts girl, boy and girl take a break, boy and girl get back together despite the relationship being stained by a bitter aftertaste of still festering wounds. Ugh, haven’t we all been there?), it is precisely its transparency, vulnerability and melodramatic normalcy that make it so compelling for me and for so many others.
“Normal People” covers many themes, including class difference, family, belonging and feminism. However, the idea that moved me the most was that a woman does not have to be perfect in order to be desired, or to be loved unconditionally and completely. Throughout the story, Marianne’s defects are spelled out so clearly to the reader: her face is plain and unnoteworthy, her body is bony and flat; she is dull and unalluring, she is cold and passive, she is bitter and reeling. Even in writings by other female authors proclaimed as empowering to women, such as Isabelle Allende or Jane Austen, the romantic protagonists all seem to have something special, something unmistakably remarkable or brillant about them. These traits, such as a progressive mind, rebellious spirit or sensual aura render them inherently desirable and worthy of love.
It has never occurred to me in my years of watching Disney movies where the princess is unconventional but coveted, consuming romantic comedies where the it girl is quirky and odd but undeniably sexy when she slips off her shirt and her bra is revealed, or reading so-called feminist literature where the woman is layered but only to a comfortably complex level, that a woman could be so completely fucked in all of the wrong places, yet still experience a passionate, fulfilling, all-encompassing, once-in-alifetime kind of love.
Why was I so shocked by this? What did this unlikeable, plain, glaringly mediocre, grotesquely human woman do to deserve a love so pure and sincere that it shattered my cold, dead heart into pieces within the span of a few chapters? Where was her ingenious spark, her manuscripts of Pulitzer-worthy novels tucked away in the bottom drawer of her dresser underneath her cigarettes, her concealed sex appeal that was only discovered after she took off her glasses? Where was her singed waste, her glorified childhood trauma, her enigmatic stare?
And more importantly, why did nobody tell me that I didn’t have to have any of those things in order to be loved that passionately by someone? Why did nobody tell me that I could continue stuffing my face with chocolate and getting pimples, neglecting the push up bras during nights out, sniffling proudly with my too-long nose that is prone to excessive dribbling in the winter months, laughing my nasal dolphin-without-water laugh when I see a poodle because I think they look stupid all of the time, maladaptive daydreaming instead of doing things that will start to make me accomplished and extraordinary; why did no one tell me that I could ditch the skin care treatments and the self-imposed dieting and the comparing and the make-up slathering and that someone would come along and still want to love me, still find me interesting enough not just to tolerate, but to revere, even though I too am fucked head to toe, inside and out, backward and forward?
I could blame a lot of things for making women feel that they have to be exceptional in order to feel worthy of unconditional love. I could blame the media. I could blame those stupid dieting programs. I could blame the rhetoric that women have to compete with each other in order to get attention from men. I could blame men, because it’s really just so easy. I could blame gender roles. I could blame capitalism, because I blame it for absolutely everything. There are lots of things to blame, lots of entangled webs with no ending that may lead me to an explanation for this bottomless pit that all women feel profoundly entrenched in their being. But I am tired of this fruitless blame-searching, and quite frankly, I don’t need an answer, because what good would that do?
People are complex, life is complex, love and relationships are complex. The best we can do is try to tell ourselves that we are enough as we are. “Normal People”has taught me that we are all just plants, each with our own luminous blossoms and ugly little wormholes, and that someday, with all of our rips, tears and bumps, we will find our neighbor plants who will twist and turn and share the sun with us. Our roots will grow deeper and our blossoms will bloom brighter, and we won’t have to change anything.
I loved Normal People, and read the book in approximately 3 hours. I cried and laughed and loved it so much, but I could never exactly articulate why. This articulates, at least, a small part of why. I love it because the characters are “normal people” flawed and boring, well-read, and a little uncomfortable, but they still connect with others. They still have the capability to love and more than that, they have the capability to be loved! This is a lovely article. Thank you.
I was always struck by how this book made me feel, but this really articulates exactly what I was feeling! What a great article.
Comments are closed.