46 pages • 1 hour read
Sally RooneyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Frances tends to believe people that she falls in love with are more powerful than her. Both Nick and Bobbi are conventionally attractive and wealthier than she is, which she conceives of as forms of power. This is not entirely inaccurate, but she errs in believing she has no power within these dynamics. The only way she can get some power back, in her mind, is to avoid vulnerability through emotional detachment. This is part of what lies behind Bobbi’s declaration that Frances has no “real personality.” Frances, of course, does have a personality, but she rarely lets people see it fully, and she comforts herself with the knowledge that she has an unrevealed secret self when she feels hurt. When she and Nick break up for the final time, she narrates, “I thought about all the things I had never told Nick about myself, and I started to feel better then, as if my privacy extended all around me like a barrier protecting my body” (275).
By Sally Rooney