Normal People

Marianne comes from a cold and dysfunctional family that views domination of women as normal behavior and where victim-blaming prevails. Her brother bullies her with the tacit encouragement of her mother, who was herself bullied by Marianne’s father while he was alive. Rather than feel empathy for her daughter, Denise despises Marianne because Marianne’s victimhood reminds her of her own. She tells herself that Marianne invites Alan’s bullying by being cold and unlikeable. By allying with Alan, Denise puts distance between herself and her own suffering. 

Marianne understands intellectually that her family is abnormal and that they treat her unfairly. Even so, this treatment is what she knows, and she repeats it in destructive sexual relationships. These relationships reinforce her idea that her family cannot be that strange—and she cannot be that special—because other people treat her as badly as her family does. To Connell, she dismisses her dark involvement with Jamie as mere sexual role playing, making it sound as if she has more volition and detachment than she does. Connell realizes that there’s “something frightening about her, some huge emptiness at the pit of her being” (247). 

Although Connell succeeds in rescuing Marianne from her family, he does not entirely rescue her from her masochistic impulses.