Summary
The next chapter picks up back in Marianne's point of view. She is home in Carricklea for a weekend, talking on the phone to Joanna while she shops for groceries. Joanna describes her new job, and Marianne asks her whether she finds it distressing to exchange her own time for a wage. After hanging up, Marianne runs into Lorraine and Connell, because Connell has moved home for the summer. Their conversation is awkward, because they broke up at the end of the semester, when Connell abruptly told Marianne he'd be home until the next school year and that he'd like to see other people.
Lorraine tells Marianne that Connell can give her a ride home, and they have a stilted, formal chat. Marianne remembers an occasion in the spring, when he visited home for reading week. He'd asked Marianne to send nude photos to him, and she'd told him that, if he ever sent her a nude picture of himself, she would look at it constantly for the rest of her life. Back in the car, as Connell drives Marianne home, they discuss Marianne's new boyfriend Jamie. Another flashback cuts into the scene, of a pool party at a wealthy classmate's family home. Connell had been publicly affectionate to Marianne for the first time, deeply gratifying her—but a few days later he had dumped her and announced he was moving home for the summer. Back in the car, Marianne considers how little Connell knows about her family life. Yet she isn't sure how to tell him, because she barely knows how to articulate her family's issues to herself. She does tell him that she's come home for her father's anniversary mass. Connell offers to attend the mass, and Marianne assents.
Back in Dublin a few weeks later, Marianne and Connell meet for coffee, with Connell's point of view once again centered. Connell remembers the process of their breakup last summer. He had lost his job and knew he wouldn't be able to pay rent. He'd planned to move out of his apartment for the summer and ask Marianne if he could move in with her, knowing that she wouldn't mind, since he slept at her apartment almost nightly anyway. Yet he'd delayed asking her, simply because the request felt like asking for charity. He'd told Marianne about his financial woes very late, and without asking for help directly, causing Marianne to misinterpret his statements as a breakup (or something like a breakup, since the two were never officially a couple). Shortly after, Marianne had started dating Jamie. Depressed and confused back in Carricklea, Connell had gotten very drunk with old school friends and run into Paula Neary, a teacher who had once visibly lusted after him. In his drunken state, he'd gone home with Paula, who had aggressively tried to have sex with him. Connell had eventually managed to make her stop and to leave her house, but was deeply disturbed by the experience.
Back at the cafe in Dublin, Marianne talks to Connell about her new boyfriend, Jamie. She tells Connell that Jamie likes to beat her up when they have sex. Connell is upset by this, but Marianne tells him that it was her idea to take a submissive role. While it physically hurts her, she says, it is emotionally gratifying to experiment with the power dynamic of the relationship, playing the role of a powerless person. Connell asks if she was interested in this kind of experimentation when they were together, and she says no: there was no need to play the role of a powerless person, she says, because she truly would have done anything Connell told her to. Marianne then asks Connell about his summer, and he begins to recount his encounter with Paula Neary.
A few months later, Marianne is with several friends in her apartment. They talk about their recent scholarship exams. Marianne feels confident about her results, though she doesn't actually need scholarship money: it's more about getting validation for her intelligence. Her friend Peggy, who has become clingy but aggressive, tries to mock her in front of their friends, making Marianne feel awkward. She's equally annoyed with her boyfriend Jamie, who tries to imply that he could have gotten a scholarship, though everyone knows he's unintelligent. For some reason, when Marianne tries to tell Peggy that she wants to break up with Jamie, Peggy gets angry and upset. At this point, Connell calls Marianne from a strange number. He's been mugged and has no phone or money. Marianne tells him to take a taxi to her apartment so that she can pay his cab fare. He does, and Marianne is shocked to see that he is bleeding and has clearly been attacked. He gets into a brief but uncharacteristic argument with Jamie, who says that a drug addict is at fault for beating Connell up. Marianne's friends go home, including Jamie, and Marianne feels awkward as she tries to balance being kind to Connell with showing affection for Jamie.
Two flashbacks punctuate these scenes. One returns to the scene in the previous chapter, in which Connell and Marianne met for coffee. Connell had told Marianne about Paula Neary's behavior, and Marianne had reacted with fury, telling Connell that she wanted to slit Neary's throat. The other flashback takes place over Christmas break, weeks prior to Connell getting mugged. Marianne's brother had once again behaved threateningly towards her, eventually spitting on her. Later, Marianne's mother Denise had given her an envelope of money and confronted her about her career plans, becoming angry and confrontational. On both occasions, Marianne had tried to avoid harm by acting quiet and acquiescent. Back at her apartment in Dublin, she and Connell talk alone. Connell asks if she really loves Jamie. He then tells Marianne that he has a girlfriend, Helen, whom he loves. Marianne bursts into tears and tries to make Connell leave her apartment. He guiltily reminds her that he needs cash to get home, which she gives him, apologizing for her emotional display. Connell also tells Marianne that he'd hoped to live with her the previous summer, and Marianne, surprised, says that she hadn't realized he wanted to. When she sees Jamie the next day, she tries to dismiss Connell's visit as an annoyance.
Analysis
One reason that readers find themselves rooting for Marianne and Connell's relationship, despite the obstacles they face, is simply the fact that many other characters in the novel are deeply unlikeable. These people are an obstacle to the protagonists' love story, exacerbating tensions that keep them apart, but they also make Marianne and Connell's interactions seem more intense and necessary. One of these unlikeable characters is Jamie, Marianne's boyfriend. Before we know anything else about him, we know that he enjoys beating up Marianne when they have sex. As Marianne herself points out, he does this with her consent: it was Marianne who asked him to. However, his enthusiastic and incurious embrace of this violence highlights two of his broader problems. One is a tendency towards aggression, dominance, and possessiveness. He seems not to like Marianne so much as he wants to control or possess her. Rooney suggests that he is simply too privileged to care about others, except for personal gain. He comes from a wealthy, influential family and has conservative, misanthropic politics, even making fun of Connell's class background to Marianne. Perhaps more importantly, the fact that he is willing to physically hurt Marianne, never suspecting that she has been a victim of abuse, shows how little he knows or cares about her. Readers may wonder why Marianne even bothers to date him. These chapters suggest a few answers. Marianne enjoys the feeling of superiority she has over Jamie, which makes her feel safe and secure around him, even if she is bored and irritated at the same time. At one point, she reflects that his transparent feelings and thoughts are reassuring to her. Moreover, his possessiveness is in some ways the opposite of the problem she has with Connell. Marianne feels thrilled when Connell publicly shows affection towards her. Jamie is happy to do so, since it brings him social clout.
The other unlikeable character in Marianne and Connell's social group is Peggy. Peggy, like Jamie, seems to stick to Marianne out of a desire to control her rather than out of actual affection. While Connell knows that he has the power to hurt Marianne and is terrified by it (sometimes to such a degree that he pulls away, hurting her all the more) Peggy takes advantage of her power by openly mocking Marianne and then manipulating her into offering forgiveness. In doing so, she makes use of the defense mechanism Marianne has developed towards her abusive family—with them and with Peggy, she avoids conflict at any cost. Peggy, like Jamie, scorns Connell and Marianne's small-town upbringing, and especially Connell's working-class background. While Jamie does so from a place of open snobbery, Peggy thinks of herself as a progressive, free-spirited person. Thus her mockery of Connell's clothing is expressed as scorn for the mainstream and dominant, though it is, Marianne knows, really rooted in classism. Similarly, Peggy makes use of vaguely feminist political signaling in order to defend rather than reject chauvinistic behavior. When Marianne complains about Jamie, Peggy defends him by arguing that he's more than adequate by male standards. In general, Peggy embodies empty political signaling, adopting an anti-establishment persona and then using it to defend the status quo.
Meanwhile, there are deeply unlikeable characters back in Carricklea too. Marianne's brother and mother display similar patterns of sadism, even though Denise's are filtered by a genteel manner. They each like to insult and humiliate Marianne, seizing on even her mildest responses as evidence of disrespect. Then, they threaten her with violence: Alan spits on or grabs Marianne, while Denise merely bangs a table in order to frighten her daughter. These characters' behavior offers much insight into Marianne's seemingly senseless choices. She asks Jamie to hurt her, and lets Peggy needle her, because she is accustomed to being harmed. Yet she also enjoys spending time with people who lack her intelligence, since they help her feel more in control.
Of course, Connell and Marianne have their own problems. The deep class divide between the two of them hasn't disappeared, even though other characters' behavior makes it seem less dramatic by comparison. At several points in these chapters, we see that Marianne's attitude towards money is primarily symbolic. To her, for instance, a scholarship is not an issue of paying for school, but rather one of being recognized academically. For Connell, money is of material importance. It's this difference in orientation towards money that causes them to break up, even when their relationship is going well in general. To Connell, asking Marianne for a place to live places a burden on her. Marianne, who thinks nothing of giving away money to someone she loves, assumes that he simply moved home as a means to break up with her. This suggests that Marianne, despite her willingness to go to extreme lengths for Connell, simply can't imagine being driven to make decisions based on money. Moreover, she is confused that Connell didn't simply ask her for a place to live, because she cannot understand his shame and guilt around asking for money.
