By Nitya Arora

Abstract

This article explores how cultural capital, in “Normal People” by Sally Rooney, is portrayed as an often misused weapon wielded by characters to formulate pseudo-intellectual discourses within an academic framework. It also goes on to observe how Rooney has let the existence of political, social, cultural and economic conflicts subtly pervade the narrative of the two protagonists and shape the perception of their social realities. This article focuses on highlighting the importance of the awareness of social and political conflicts in mundanity, especially when one can get away with limiting them to intellectual discourses, as embellished by Rooney in the novel.

Within the context of Normal People by Sally Rooney, there are a variety of incidents where the author emphasises the practice of wielding cultural capital and trivial knowledge in mundane discourses about books, literature, and art. She iterates how it is often used as a status symbol to assert the possession of seemingly superior insights on the understanding of abstract and undefined constructs, especially within academic institutions. In the novel, Sally Rooney also emphasises the vitality of taking notice of social issues through the simultaneous experiences of the two protagonists, Marianne and Connell, who have been exposed to contrasting encounters while belonging to the same small town and attending the same University. In the book, Rooney paints a mural of influences that shape them and how they adapt to the diverse forms of cultural capital demanded from them. 

Cultural Capital in Academia

There are several instances in the novel where concepts like class differences, sexism, housing crisis, gatekeeping of “culture”, and unacknowledged privilege are observed in the life of the two protagonists. However, the cardinal concern of the narrative is not to give a comprehensive commentary on or analysis of these cascading crises that take place in the backdrop. Rooney talks about this in her interview with The London Review Bookshop, when she discusses a particular scene in the novel that is set in the “ghost estate” – a big, old abandoned house that became a place for people to drink and smoke. This is where Connell asks Marianne why they refuse to give away vacant houses to people who need them if they are unable to sell them. Here, Rooney alludes to the post-crash Irish economy and its housing crisis. She also highlights the stark difference in the reality of the two protagonists – Marianne has financial privilege and has never had to worry about having a roof over her head, whereas Connell and his mother struggle to make ends meet. In Rooney’s words, “I can’t say to myself that I wanted to make some kind of commentary on say, the Irish housing crisis or the property bubble or something, because I don’t think the scene offers that commentary. I suppose all it does is that it allows the landscape and material geography of post-crash Ireland to sort of intrude on the narrative and become part of it in that way.” 

This disposition is apparent throughout the novel, where there are subtle obtrusions in the narrative to recognise the existence of critically debated social, economic, or cultural discourses in mundane life. The reader gets a gist of these conflicts in the societal framework of the novel. They are offered as observations of these problems and the novel does not categorically belong to a socialist or feminist standpoint, though there are apparent elements of these ideologies in it. The reader is made aware of these elements because the characters are consciously aware of them as well. So, in addition to progressing the plot and the narrative, through the acknowledgement of these conflicts, the reader is nudged to see their presence in the lives of people instead of limiting them to constructs and concepts that should be studied intellectually or have the awareness of their existence be flamboyantly used to portray superior knowledge of cultural capital. 

When Connell goes to University, he becomes hypervigilant of the difference in the cultural and economic capital possessed by him as opposed to his classmates. There is a significant shift in the social exchanges he has with his classmates from school to university. In his hometown, he was able to effortlessly blend in with people in inconsequential conversations, however, his social reality at his university is at first, seemingly inseparable from his constant conscious observations of the distinctions between his economic background and conceptual expressions in comparison to his classmates. In the novel, Rooney describes them as students who “have identical accents and carry the same size MacBook under their arms. In seminars, they express their opinions passionately and conduct impromptu academic debates.” Connell, on the other hand, is “unable to form such straightforward views or express them with any force.” He “initially felt a sense of crushing inferiority to his fellow students, as if he had upgraded himself accidentally to an intellectual level far above his own, where he had to strain to make sense of the most basic premises.” Though, he eventually starts to notice the abstract nature of his classmates’ discussions that lack nuance because, he realises, that they never actually do their reading. They are rarely worried about appearing conceited or ignorant because they know that they are not so much smarter than him either. 

Simultaneously, his conversations with Marianne lead to a starkly different observation. As described in the novel, they are “gratifying for Connell. Often taking unexpected turns and prompting him to express ideas he had never consciously formulated before. They talk about novels that he’s reading, the research she studies, the precise historical moment that they are currently living in, the difficulty of observing such a moment in practice.” The disillusionment he faces with his classmates at first is not something that he encounters with Marianne because their discussions are not lacking in contextual clarity, or at least, not an amalgamation of thoughtlessly spoken absolute conclusions of various discourses. This provokes the consideration – if his classmates can breeze through classes based on pseudo-intellectual arguments and manipulate the premise to favour their particular cavalry of cultural capital, then how do academia and institutional learning weed out the false sincerity in students, instructors and researchers that is meant to be sifted out through exactly the kind of intensely intellectual cultural capital that they demand?

“Money, the substance that makes the world real.”

For Connell, receiving a scholarship from his university opens up a realm of opportunities. It allows him to get a postgraduate degree for free if he wants, live in Dublin for free and never think about rent till he completes college. He can spend an afternoon in Vienna looking at Vermeer’s The Art of Painting, and then go buy himself lunch afterwards if he wants. In the novel, Rooney explains this by saying “It’s like something he assumed was just a painted backdrop all his life has revealed itself to be real: foreign cities are real and famous artworks, and underground railway systems, and remnants of the Berlin Wall. That’s money, the substance that makes the world real. There’s something so corrupt and sexy about it.” However, this causes him to feel guilty about the fact that he gets to have these inexplicably grand experiences and mundane luxuries while his mother is still struggling to make ends meet. On this, Marianne urges him to consider what he thinks is fair and good in the world. If he thinks that people should be able to go to college and get English degrees and go to Europe and look at art, then he should not feel guilty for himself, because on objective consideration he has the right to do those things. Marianne and Connell also have an honest confrontation about their class differences, where they finally acknowledge that the reason they met was because his mother works for her family and that her mother is not a good employer, paying Connell’s mother ridiculously little income. 

In the television series based on the novel, there is an additional scene in which after backpacking through Europe, Connell and his friend, Niall, visit Marianne and her boyfriend Jamie, along with other company, to spend time in Marianne’s family home in Italy. Jamie asks Niall why he would want to spend his summer on trains and hostels, to which Niall responds that he would do it to meet new people, for culture, to save some money and to see the world. When they talk about how Connell stared at The Art of Painting the whole day, Jamie comments on how that is essentially a tick-box tour in which you cannot experience what a place has to offer because your head is stuck in a guidebook. In this instance, Jamie commercialises Connell’s experience of looking at a painting and being moved by art, taking for granted his privilege to have been able to look at art and go to art galleries, which Connell could not have dreamed of having access to had it not been for earning a merit-based scholarship. Jamie views the act of looking at the painting as a facade because to him such instances of cultural acknowledgement have been a constant peripheral presence through his privilege. He views Connell’s prolonged awe for an artwork as a ruse because he is blinded by class privilege to any other narrative but his own. 

The main exploration in the novel is that of the dynamic between Connell and Marianne, however, the backdrop consists of different social, political, cultural and economic realities that make themselves a part of their interactions, perceptions, and misunderstandings. Normal People, in this context, becomes an attempt to sensitise its readers towards understanding the presence of larger conflicts in mundanity, especially when one can very well get away with not acknowledging them beyond intellectual consideration. Rooney constantly alludes to the fact that people who can choose to be politically ignorant are, at the end of the day, favoured by flawed political frameworks. 

Author’s Bio

Nitya Arora is a second-year student at O.P. Jindal Global University pursuing English Honours. Her areas of interest include literary studies, book cultures, and mapping cultures through their literary representations.

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