You Are Not Marianne Sheridan, You Are—unfortunately—Connell Waldron: An honest recount of the humbling experience of living the university life, and the Marxism of it all
University life is just like Normal People, just not in the way you think.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
You are fresh out of a long summer break in your hometown. And if you’re honest with yourself, you’re starting to get sick of it—familiarity breeds contempt, anyway. It’s too hot, too humid. You’re stuck at home most of the time, which is partly your fault because you can’t drive. You waste away your inconsequential days by reading and mending a heart and daydreaming. You’re itching for a new life that exempts you from facing the consequences of your current self and your past mistakes. You long for an escape from this life of apathy, and that coveted moment finally arrives as you lug your carriage bags through immigration and you leave your family and friends (and your cat) back home.
You pursue a degree in science, of all things. You meet new people in university, reiterate your beliefs and values, deconstruct your sense of personhood, and rebuild from scratch. You are fresh, born anew. Life is your greatest teacher. You assimilate, break out, break down, break even, disappoint others, and let others disappoint you. You act selfishly, selflessly, simultaneously empathetic and ignorant. You are inside out, your past life upended and in a state of disuse. You find yourself dragged, bedraggled, on a pedestal, on top of the world. You celebrate birthdays and small wins, travel with friends to places you’ve never even thought of going because why not, and with bated breath you realise: you have counted on this moment to happen, and always have.
The whirlwind of life carries you to new people, places, and experiences, but with it, descends a sense of weighted heaviness in you. It seeks a home, lonely, and nestles warmly in the crevice between your breast bones. You’re confused by this unwarranted presence, but that’s okay, it’s lonely. You train your focus towards appreciating the finer things in life. Maybe it’ll go away soon.
It has been two years since, but the weighted feeling remains a terrorising stillness in my physique, if not heavier and more… tangible.
It’s difficult to describe my university experience thus far. I’ve still got a year left as an undergraduate before having to grapple with the possibility of unemployment. Graduation looms menacingly over me, a predestined page at the end of a storybook. While there have been far too many happy memories that I'll forever be grateful for, there have also been moments of lonesome quiet when certain questions would tug at the back of my mind, like a soft wind chime hum in a suffocating room, or a tiny rippling movement in a stagnant body of water, beckoning for my attention. Over the course of these two years, this weight has shifted shapes and forms in accordance with the themes of struggle—as I like to call it—as I go through the phases in my life at university. It had initially started as a personal struggle, then an existential one, and now it has metamorphosed into a… socio-eco-political struggle?
A few days ago, I came across a Sally Rooney interview in which she talks about her seminal novel Normal People. The story depicts two main characters from different social classes: Marianne Sheridan, an awkward, social outcast who comes from an affluent family, and Connell Waldron, the popular, academically-gifted athlete at school whose family is of the working class. I first read this book when I was studying for IB in college, young and naive about the reality of university life. I mostly read it for the ‘romance’ and was completely ignorant about the broader—and arguably, more important—themes of the book. Essentially, Normal People is a deep dive into the dynamic at play between Marianne and Connell, and the dynamic between each of them and the society they live in within the constraints (and in some cases, benefits) of their social class.
In the interview, Rooney described the nature of their relationship to be ‘Marxist’. TLDR; Marxism is a sociological-economic theory by Karl Marx that fights against capitalism, a system that favours the bourgeoisie (the rich) rather than the proletariat (the working class), which represents the majority of society. Marxism advocates for a classless society in which all property and wealth are communally rather than privately owned. In a way, both Marx and Rooney go hand in hand in combating against capitalism, a form of society's final boss. Rooney has been claimed by critics and fans alike to be the modern face of marxism, with Rooney labelling herself as a marxist-feminist. But what does a Marxist relationship dynamic mean?
Marianne and Connell’s differences in their social classes presents itself as a challenge in their blooming friendship. Despite their instant physical attraction and emotional connection, Marianne’s unlikeable persona at school prevents Connell, who’s greatly affected by other people’s perception of him, from staying true to his feelings. To add to that, Connell’s mother works for the Sheridans as a housekeeper, which further complicates the power dynamics at hand. Soon they find themselves on a balancing act of becoming friends with benefits. Connell only talks to Marianne within the confines of her home, far away from the snarky remarks of their judgmental peers. Marianne agrees to this arrangement only because she has no one else to confide in and struggles with feelings of self-worthlessness.
Despite their challenges, the unlikely pair find themselves orbiting around each other. Whenever Marianne goes through a traumatic experience, Connell comes to her rescue. But don’t be fooled; this isn’t your typical knight in shining armour trick. Oftentimes, Connell is absent for Marianne’s grievances: like the time when he remains silent when she is shunned by their high school peers, or when he doesn’t ask Marianne to the school dance for fear of scrutiny by others. The same goes for Marianne whose privileged background makes her ignorant about the imposed class superiority she has over Connell. Them being there for each other, or at least trying to, is the transactional nature that Rooney was talking about.
The characters also find themselves in a transactional relationship with society. In one of the book’s later chapters (pg. 195), Connell is seen attending a literary reading event at his university, in Trinity College, Dublin. However, he feels alienated from what he sees.
Connell couldn’t think of any reason why these literary events took place, what they contributed to anything, what they meant. They were attended only by people who wanted to be the kind of people who attended them.
In the interview, Rooney then goes on to explain the alienation that Connell is experiencing. According to Rooney, class can be used as a tool in literature to understand how the broad social structure impacts interpersonal relationships. One of the ways is in the form of commodities (also known as items or physical objects). She explained that a book is a form of commodity that someone has to pay for in order to access a cultured community (the literary reading event). The writer sells the event attendees the product in the form of cultured existence as a gateway to a cultured class (aka a class who read books). This is what Marxism tries to fight against: the alienation of the working class from the ownership of means of production. What Connell is experiencing directly ties to the isolating existence under a capitalist framework.
I found the things she was saying in the interview profound. While Karl Marx argues the transactional nature of material relations in society, Rooney bounces off of that rhetoric, transmutes it, and applies the concept of Marx’s material relations in the context of interpersonal relationships. She had somehow magically captured the essence of relationships in the 21st century: a modern Marxism. She manages to articulate with succinct ease the ideas that were boiling in me, unaware, for the last two years. Words that I couldn’t sew into proper sentences myself. Mirroring the experience Connell went through at that literary reading event, I can’t recall the number of times I found myself in my neuroscience lectures about neuronal long-term potentiation or attending networking socials where I felt completely out of place and thinking, how the hell did I end up here?
In the same interview, Rooney argues that individualism isn’t a way to live, because what does it mean to live independently? Despite the odds, Marianne and Connell needed each other. One thing I love most about her views is that they are clearly a reflection of her Irish roots which, when compared to other cultures such as the United States, a country that fervently advocates for free speech and an individualistic lifestyle. At the end of the book (pg. 230), Marianne’s introspective monologue echoes Rooney’s sentiments:
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.
So. If we analyse our interactions with our friends, our community, and our society according to this framework, how many commodities do we own? How much can we offer others? To say that I am purely defined by these transactional terms feels bleak and macabre, but certainly I am defined by these conditions to a certain degree? How much can I, a person who originates from the working class, whose family comes from the lower class, offer to those around me? How much of me is valuable to others?
This takes me back to the time when I had dinner with one of my close friends in Brussels. We were talking about intergenerational socioeconomic relations in our families. Looking back, it was fitting that we had that specific conversation there. How fitting, I thought, that we talked about intergenerational socioeconomic trauma in our families in Brussels, a country that conjures itself as a small home in my mind whenever I speak about it, out of all places?
The conversation left a lasting impact on me because we delved into the complex histories of our family roots and how we came to be. We talked about our mothers who came from their mothers, dissected the socioeconomic backgrounds of our families to death, and how that could possibly have impacted how we form our self-perceptions and how we carry ourselves in the world.
They say trauma is stored in the body. What happens when the trauma is intergenerational? How much is recycled, upcycled, reused, made anew and formed the living cells in my body? A quantitative measure of intergenerational trauma is nearly impossible, but what if that measure is reflected in the commodities that I own and am able to offer?
In the midst of my cataclysmic spiral, I sent a text to Sofea, my best friend who lives in the small town of Poitiers, France:
I feel like a fraud
hejehdj kenapa ([keyboard smash] why)
I explained to her how the bulk of the personal struggles I’m facing now in university are possibly tied to my cultural background, upbringing, and most prominently, my socioeconomic status. I am a Malaysian Malay Muslim who comes from a working-class family. I am a government-loaned international student in the UK. In other words, I will automatically be in debt after I graduate. I recognise my privilege of studying at a prestigious university in London, but feel estranged from the things happening around me, like an imposter waiting to be caught. A matter of fact that wouldn’t be so hard to admit if I didn’t feel like a sore thumb sticking out among a sea of Malaysian students diaspora studying in London who came from more ‘prestigious’ schools or upbringing. But fret not! You can pay your access into these communities and your chosen social circles through the ownership of commodities, whatever that may be (by which the process of figuring out what that is possibly self-destructing and self-dehumanising).
So maybe, this sense of alienation or ‘not belonging’ in the course I’m studying or the environment I find myself in contributes to my struggle with imposter syndrome. This is the repercussions of my living in a capitalist system, and genuinely? It’s scary as fuck.
Writing this essay right now, I acknowledge that the ‘Connell Waldron university experience’ is ubiquitous and common among university students, however my experience with having to live through it is deeply personal. Though we all would love to have the underdog to cool manic pixie dream girl arc that Marianne experienced, most of us are just barely hanging on and desperately trying—and sometimes failing!—to fit in, much like Connell, whether it be in the course we are studying, the social circles we find ourselves in, or the foreign country we live in as a whole.
Writing this essay feels raw and personal, but I tell myself that it's a good sign that I’m being honest in my writing. I admit to having a rudimentary knowledge of Marxism, barely scraping the surface, to be honest. The last thing I want is to have this essay be a oh pity me! sort of situation. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s the acknowledgment of my own privilege while feeling useless in the commodities that I am able to offer others, and berating myself for it. What I write is always a reflection of where my head space is at, and realising the transactional nature of things (mainly: in our relationships with others and society) is like telling a 5-year-old that her favourite candy is unethically sourced from third world countries where labour rights are non-existent. Is this a long winded way to say that I’ve finally gained class consciousness at the ripe age of 22? Maybe. Late bloomer aside, getting to that point of in my life—which is a pilgrimage I’m sure everyone will go through or have gone through in their life—is an extremely uncomfortable, unpleasant and anxiety-inducing predicament to find yourself in.
The best I can do for now is to remain grateful for the opportunities that were given to me, and remain informed about current events. Especially with the decades-long ongoing colonial occupation on Palestine and now the siege upon civilians in Lebanon, or the dehumanising exploitation of miners and labor in Congo, my class consciousness-induced spiral seem so infinitesimally small an issue. Nonetheless, more than ever, it is the most crucial time to be there for one another in times of need, like how my friends try to be there for me, and I for them. To echo what Rooney said, we are not an independent society. People need other people. Or maybe Karl Marx himself said it best: Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Reference materials:
Writer Sally Rooney on Transforming Life Into Novels | Louisiana Channel https://youtu.be/ho5ja2trqrs?si=KxgoDcp3KJ_-XU1O
OPINION: The heralding of a beautiful apocalypse: A Marxist love story - https://www.idsnews.com/article/2023/11/opinion-heralding-of-a-beautiful-apocalypse-marxist-love-story-sally-rooney-normal-people
How Sally Rooney Gave Normal People Radical Politics - https://jacobin.com/2020/05/sally-rooney-normal-people-bbc-literature
Normal People: portrait of a 21st century Marxist - https://thestute.com/2023/09/15/normal-people-portrait-of-a-21st-century-marxist/
edited by: Sofea Shabani
you bring so much value in my life 🌷 you belong here!