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But why Marianne? It wasn’t like she was so attractive. Some people thought she was the ugliest girl in school. What kind of person would want to do this with her?
This quotation from One Month Later (March 2011) shows Connell remembering his first sexual encounter with Marianne while simultaneously berating himself for wanting to have sex with her in the first place. Connell doesn’t consider Marianne “so attractive,” but he is still highly attracted to her, indicating that he has contradicting feelings about her. The next part of the quote, where he cites the opinions of other people that Marianne is the ugliest girl in school, is a clue to where some of Connell’s judgment of himself may come from. Connell is so embarrassed by his sexual association with Marianne that he endeavors to keep it a secret for as long as possible, which leads to his humiliation of Marianne when he invites someone else to the Debs. Here, he reveals the inner turmoil he experiences because his own desire conflicts with the repulsion of others.
Later he would wonder if he was really defending Marianne or just defending himself from an implied accusation about his own sexuality, that he was tainted somehow, that he had unacceptable desires
In this quote from Six Months Later (July 2013), Connell reflects on his defense of Marianne to his girlfriend Helen, who frequently speaks negatively about Marianne, accusing her of being overly flirtatious and attention-seeking with men. Even while he is dating someone else whose association he finds socially acceptable, Connell is still concerned that his desire for Marianne is unacceptable in a way that will permanently stain his reputation. He does not agree with Helen’s aspersions against Marianne, but he feels shame about his past sexual involvement with Marianne anyway, which he believes stands in sharp relief against the respectability of his relationship with Helen. Until Connell learns to be more self-assured in his own desires, he will be unable to defend Marianne wholeheartedly.
He tells her bad things about herself. It’s hard to know whether Marianne likes to hear those things; she desires to hear them, but she’s conscious by now of being able to desire in some sense what she does not want.
Here, in Five Months Later (December 2013), Marianne considers her own motivation for allowing Lukas, her Swedish friend, to say cruel and demeaning things to her as part of their sexual relationship. In this quotation, Marianne draws a stark dividing line between what she “wants” and what she “desires,” depicting desire as something lurid and destructive, while want is rational and respectable. Despite knowing she is sexually interested in men dominating her, Marianne is only able to approach that fact indirectly, by separating her unseemly desires from her rational wants, which shows that she still does not approve of her own sexuality. This leaves the door open for her to find herself just as repulsive as the men who abuse her under the pretense of consensual domination do. As long as she is repulsed by her own desire, Marianne will continue seeking out men who are also repulsed by her.
