Normal patriarchs: Masculine performance and fragility in Sally Rooney’s Normal People

This article analyses the concepts of patriarchy and fragility as presented in Sally Rooney’s Normal People . Drawing from bell hooks’s theories on masculinity in The Will to Change , fragility is understood as a fundamental underside to the performance of domination in patriarchal identity. After analysing the aggressive yet insecure behaviours of the novel’s secondary male characters, I focus on Connell, whose sensitivity has been embraced in popular culture as contributing to new forms of masculinity. I argue it is through him that Rooney most thoroughly explores the damaging persistence of patriarchal ideology in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Literary form, particularly free indirect style, is seen to capture the fragility of his subjectivity in relation to the hegemonic order of patriarchy. I examine his (limited) passage from compartmentalization, which results in toxic secrecy with Marianne, towards integrity, a state which is inverse to, yet partially manifests out of, fragility.