Class as a Constraint and Renegotiation of Identities and Relations: Sally Rooney’s Normal People (2018) and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021)

Författare

Sarah Hyde-Price Aggestam

Summary, in Swedish

This essay examines the role of class in Sally Rooney’s novels Normal People (2018) and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021). The critical response to Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People has focused on several aspects of the novel, such as how class and gender are portrayed and identity formation in recessionary Ireland, whereas literary criticism on Beautiful World, Where Are You has focused on other aspects of the novel, such as Rooney’s use of modernist features. This essay analyses what role class plays in the characters’ lives and relationships by applying sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social class to both novels. The key concepts that are used are Bourdieu’s concepts “capital” (value), “habitus” (dispositions), and “field” (social space). This thesis incorporates the concept of field into the literary analysis, a key theoretical term largely overlooked in previous criticism, and emphasises its crucial role in understanding how different forms of capital are recognised and how habitus operates within specific social contexts. Within Bourdieu’s framework of class, this essay argues that in Sally Rooney's Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You, class functions as a force that constrains characters’ relationships and lives, as well as a process of transformation that compels them to redefine their identities and connections. In doing so, the thesis examines the ways in which class plays a major role in shaping the characters’ lives and their claim to selfhood and agency in Rooney’s novels.

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