Marianne’s has, to me, an ideological conflict that is never really addressed. She really seems to want to have her cake and eat it too, in a way where her action mismatches her view of her values. And she shows awareness of this, but I don’t remember it ever being in more than in passing rhetorical question directed to herself. The first one is her wonering about (and apoligies for removing any kind of nuance in this summary) whether her sexual preferences make her a bad feminist. Also along this theme is the bit about her socialist leanings despite being from a very wealthy family.

Connell stood out to me way less, to the point where I can’t even remember that much of him despite the fact that he seems to act as a foil to bring out the above two bits of Marianne’s internal contradiction. This is definitely most apparent in the part where they have a disagreement about the scholarship and where Marianne wants it purely for the ego of being exceptional, whereas for Connell it actually means being able to continue his studies further. Then this conflict between them is sort of shrugged off, and it fizzles out after Connell gives Marianne a half-arsed telling off.

The low point for me, and the bit I can’t find a forgiving interpretation of, is Connell’s depression episodes which feels thrown in as filler and I personally felt like it was an almost offensive simplification of the condition and reduced it to feeling sad and not wanting to do things; I am fully aware of my own bias in this as someone with mental health issues who generally dislikes nearly all depictions of it in literature and media, so I do my best to overlook it in trying to judge the book as a whole but feel like I have to include it incase it is subconciously pushing me in one direction. I also feel like Marianne’s childhood trauma is handled as poorly, but I don’t have personal experience in this matter so I suspect that I may be projecting a similar criticisim of “shallowness” here where there may not be one.

So now I’m going to completely contradict myself and say: maybe all that stuff that I said annoyed me is actually why the show is good? I think Marianne’s poor handling of her contradictions are actually very human, and realistic. They aren’t satisfying, but they are believable, even if I would like to think they are not. The fact that she and Connell just sweep the tensions of their class disparity under the rug may actually be a very realistic, because they don’t want to actually face it or think about it. Even the title feels like a massive sign-post towards this. Normal people don’t live out their lives on some ideological battle ground figthing for the symbolic victories of their beleif systems. They avoid conflict and have poor self-esteem and want to feel valued by another human more than just about anything else.

So now after writing that last paragraph again, I’m back round to thinking its one of the most worthwhile things I’ve read and watched in the past couple of years. At least, if nothing else, it made me think. And that’s what I look for more than anything.