This April I, amongst thousands of others, fell hopelessly in love with Connell Waldron. He anxiously strode out of my television screen and, terrified about breaking it, took my heart. It appears, unfortunately, that I am not alone in taking Connell as my fantasy lock-down boyfriend. Indeed, the online community of those of us whose hearts bleed for Connell Waldron have been reduced to concentrating our burgeoning adoration into one focal microcosm - the chains he wears throughout all 6 heavenly and heart-wrenching hours of the series - which have gone viral as we use them to control the otherwise overwhelming oxytocin release induced by Connell Waldron. Paul Mescal, whose show-stopping portrayal of Connell’s complex character, and for whom this is his breakthrough role, has deservedly been heralded as the next Cillian Murphy.
However, whilst the philological of us indulge in both the character and physique that made us fall in love with Connell, perhaps what is to be celebrated most is the rare opportunity for a very ordinary young man and all his complexities to be portrayed in such an extraordinary way on screen.
When I first heard about the Normal People adaptation, I was dubious. It didn’t seem like Sally Rooney’s book - which I enjoyed, but didn’t ferociously recommend - could be enhanced through dramatised adaptation. This summarises exactly what the Harry Potter generation have come to expect from film and television adaptations - an often enjoyable retelling based on the original book, but with (what is presumed to be) nonessential details removed to preserve audience attention. If you enjoy a book, you don’t ever expect to enjoy the adaptation as much, but watch it anyway, so you too can complain about the missed scenes and dialogue, the casting that doesn’t match exactly how you interpreted the characters. Those of us who were so eager to break the monotony of Friday night Zoom quizzes with our criticisms of the Normal People adaptation were left bitterly disappointed. With nothing to critique, we have only Connell’s chains to pour our unworthy praise upon.
The adaptation of Normal People was given both space and time to be more than a ‘based on the original story by ….’ adaptation; it is a dramatised version of Rooney’s original narrative (albeit excluding that moment when Connell batters Jamie by the pool - the exclusion of which, is, in my opinion the show’s only downfall). It is a very rare adaptation that, for those of us whose imagination fails to do so, brings the novel to life. Only with this space, and with this time are Connell’s intricacies given the space to be shown and explored. Amongst friends, I have heard reviews that praise the series, but have found it ‘too slow’ to really get into - the space given to silence, confusion, and stumbling too difficult to watch. Yet for me, this is what made Normal People so precious.
When I first read Normal People, I liked Connell both as a person and as a character. I thought he was interesting, but I didn’t think about him between the period after I closed the book in August 2019 and the 26th of April. In hindsight, after watching the adaptation, it’s clear that when reading the book, I missed at least 50% of the intricacies of Connell’s character. Whilst I understood Marianne’s joys and challenges - gender and class at the centre of this, not a shared experience of an abusive home life void of love, thankfully - it took Paul Mescal’s dramatised portrayal of Connell’s inability to articulate his conflicting feelings to appreciate what I missed in Rooney’s written Connell. This, for me, is why the series is such a powerful, and essential accompaniment to the book. It helped me to understand Connell, and Connell made me appreciate, for the first time, the weight and pressure that the period of post-adolescence to adulthood looks like for a young man. He was the man that I needed to see on screen.
A man who feels, but doesn’t know what to do with these feelings, doesn’t know where to put them. A man who is intelligent and incredibly ambitious, but who is also plagued by the crippling power of self-doubt. A man who is kind, and cares, but whose awkwardness prevents him from articulating it. A man who is motivated by the unachievable human desire to please everyone, which usually results in him hurting those he cares for most to a point where he’s unable to forgive himself. At the heart of this complex character - both a bi-product of, and the result of his many failings and challenges - is a man who suffers with anxiety and depression. Connell’s character shows the realities of a life that constantly fluctuates and is influenced, although often without realising, by these two symbiotic mental illnesses. Through Connell, we delve into a fictional portrayal of a life that is permanently tinged with the grayscale - constantly altering in saturation - that these illnesses bring.
This exploration of the male mental health epidemic through the lens of one man’s journey into adulthood - and how this is affected by the mental wellbeing of those around him - is deeply refreshing. Connell’s character in many ways denounces traditional - what some would call toxic - masculinity and its surrounding cultures. He studies English at university, he’s kind, he cares about the female orgasm, and he grew up with a doting mother who he clearly loves and respects. Yet he also naturally embodies traditional masculine values - he’s protective, and my god, he is b u r l e y. However, in one experience that is not traditionally masculine he is sexually exploited at the hands of an older woman (his teacher - brushed over in the BBC adaptation), yet - in a move that is so very traditionally masculine - ashamed, he tells nobody. His character challenges the dichotomy of the masculine and the feminine in a way that is entirely natural and relatable. We see how profound the societal pressure upon young men to be young men is, even on those who are aware of, acknowledge, and - to an extent - reject this pressure.
Over the past two weeks I have been an AVID (and probably quite annoying) contributor in a group chat dissecting the series and the novel. Everyone’s opinions are different. Amongst other important topics (such as did Daisy Edgar-Jones really lose the chain?!), in this chat we discussed why the men of the group weren’t as attracted to Marianne as the ladies are to Connell. One person suggested that Connell’s silence offers a space in which we input what we want him to be. This, they argued, is why we have all wasted so many of our locked-down hours day-dreaming about Connell, because we have all projected the man we day-dream about onto Connell’s silent character. Whilst to an extent I agree with this point, Connell’s silence is not voiceless - it’s an emptiness we know that he wants to fill, but can’t. It is the centre-point of his character, and the most antagonising thing about him. Mescal himself said that when he watched the final cut, he wanted to slap Connell, telling him to say what he’s feeling, to articulate what’s going on inside. Connell’s, lack of dialogue - for me - doesn’t retract from his character and make it easier for us to project what we want onto him, but rather, is what makes him such a poignant character to explore. Watching the crippling effects of being unable to voice feelings and needs, illuminated just how lucky I am to know that I am able to. Seeing an extremely intelligent man from a working-class background physically struggling to express his emotions and desires on-screen exemplifies just how deep this mindset penetrates. It turns many to addictions, some to abuse, and some to self-harm, as we have seen so often on screen before, but very rarely do we see so clearly the effects of male anxiety and depression expressed exactly as it so often is, in very few words. Mescal’s Connell dramatises silence to realistically articulate the lethal concoction of anxiety, depression and masculinity that so many feel crushed by.
Rooney’s novel has been hailed as the modern Millennial love story, an undeniable truth. However, to define it this way alone is, in my opinion, reductive. With the help of the BBC adaptation, Rooney’s book has become a story that is far more than a love story. It’s just as much a novel about the growing male mental-health epidemic in the UK, about the dangerous rippling effects that the online porn industry has had on young people’s sexual experiences, and is of course, a novel about class. It is also, to some extent, a bildungsroman for both characters, watching them develop from the days when they think they’re adults, to the days when they almost are. As a young woman who is now on the adult-end of that divide, there is a lot in Marianne and Connell’s story that I can relate to. The overwhelming effects of a first-love that you can’t stop returning to and the pain that comes when life finally moves you on. However, what Normal People’s Connell’s allowed me to do for the first time, was to see things from the other side. I saw the tormenting anxiety behind the silence of the men who had hurt me in the past. The sentences almost spoken, but never quite. It opened wounds, but also healed them, and finally made me aware of the thoughts hidden behind the silences that broke my heart.
Photo courtesy of the real star of the show (@connellschain)