Let the games begin….

“Took another two milligrams and went to sleep with the lights on” - Rooney, page 359. Instead of letting out steam through drugs and alcohol, drugs and alcohol start to control Peter.

This is Part 2 in a three part series about Intermezzo by Sally Rooney.

Read Part 1.

Read Part 3.

Judgment & Respect

In Intermezzo, characters who judge their desires spiral in shame. The anti-dote is self-respect.

Peter

Peter judges himself for seeing Naomi. Instead of tackling this shame, he makes circular excuses padded with pseudo-intellectual jargon: “The…sexual and also quietly financial relationship, of eight months’ duration, with [Naomi]…is, from the legal-philosophical, socio-political point of view, a thing of nothing” (Rooney, page 15). What a bunch of baloney.

When we dislike something about someone else, it’s usually because we dislike that trait in ourselves.

The more he represses, the more his desires leak out through “the pills, the alcohol” (322). This puts him in a self-destructive feedback loop.

Peter is too sensitive to reflect. Instead, he uses Ivan and Margaret as surrogates for his shame. Margaret is similar enough for Peter to project onto, “as if seeing in a mirror, himself but not” (435). Suffice to say, the “hypocrisy kind of jumps out” (380). Peter is paying a woman ten years younger for sex, but judges Ivan and Margaret for their 14 year age gap. He tells Ivan, “Do you think a normal woman of her age would want to hang around with [you]?” (170).

Both Margaret and Peter drink lemonade before big moments. Margaret, before sleeping with Ivan for the first time. Peter, before nearly killing Ivan.

Peter isn’t worried Margaret is abnormal, like he says. He’s worried that he is abnormal: “If this woman is as selfish as I am, he’s fucked” (323). When we dislike something about someone else, it’s usually because we dislike that trait in ourselves.

Peter goes on to insult and attack Ivan, hurt Sylvia, break up with Naomi, and nearly kill himself. How can he break out of this shame spiral?

Through self-respect: “himself, the self that is loved by her, and therefore worthy of his own respect” (424). Once he accepts himself, he doesn’t have to vomit shame onto his little brother.

“A woman, yes, white and pink complexion like a flower” - Rooney, page 435

Margaret

Margaret clings just as tightly to self-ideals. While Peter has to be high-status, Margaret has to be respectable, like “some kind of saint” (185).

She used to define herself by moral superiority to her alcoholic ex-husband. The more reckless he was, the more she was forced into “being perfect, being in the right” (404). She “hated being that person,” but lost herself in the marriage (404). This adopted “sense of rightness” is all she has left, so she holds onto it “dearer…than her life” (406).

But her severe judgement gets turned around on herself when she meets a young man she can’t resist.

Margaret and Ivan are the same ages as Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin from *The Graduate.*

Margaret thinks it’s wrong for a 36 year-old woman to sleep with a 22 year-old man. I guess she’s never seen The Graduate?? Anne Bancroft was 36 when the movie came out and Dustin Hoffman’s character was 21. Like Mrs. Robinson, Margaret’s conventionality burns to bits in the face of wildfire desire for her younger lover: “wanting, and nothing mattered, her ideas, values…respectability…no, not even the guilt, shame, only the feeling, wanting so much…” (401). Even so, letting go of conventionality is scary for Margaret. If she isn’t respectable…..who is she?

Margaret judges herself through Peter’s imagined perspective, “What do you think he would say if he knew?” (124), and even sympathizes with Peter, “you’re defending my brother against me” (256). Margaret is ashamed of herself and projects that shame as coming from Peter.

Intermezzo is a brief musical interlude between acts of a play. This is Margaret’s intermezzo: the interlude between self-judgment and self-respect.

Instead of choosing between sexual pleasure or decency she lets go of the binary altogether and “incorporates that woman into herself” (49). Once she accepts her love for Ivan, she isn’t afraid of judgment: “Nothing protected, nothing left to be protected anymore. A wild woman, her mother called her…And so she is” (407).

“A single sycamore leaf of rich yellow color has drifted onto her windshield.” - Rooney, page 85

Rigidity & Delusion

Characters with rigid expectations can’t tolerate imperfection. When things go bad, they slip into delusion.

Sylvia

Sylvia has a problem (she can’t have intercourse) and a solution (she can have sex in other ways: “on my own, I can still— you know” (134). But that solution is no good for her: “if I can’t do something properly, I don’t want to do it at all…I would find it humiliating…very inferior” (133). If she can’t have “proper” sex, she won’t have sex at all.

She pressures herself to be perfect and misassigns that pressure as coming from Peter. In an intimate moment, Peter tells her, “There’s no pressure. Even just to talk, it’s nice” (135). To which she replies, “Whatever I do, it’s not enough. It has to be the one thing I can’t do” (136). Her intensity doesn’t match Peter’s ease, and she collapses into tears. She is so hard on herself.

“Over the rocks at the end of the beach, saltwater crashes with a hissing fracturing sound, and sea spray rises glittering against the grey sky…” Rooney, page 179

Sylvia shuts out sex from her life. But whatever we repress comes out….somehow………

Sylvia gets her kicks in, subconsciously. She strings Peter along, receives his unwavering adoration, and controls his life, without ever having to be vulnerable herself. She gets pleasure from this power, and it’s a little Machiavellian. Peter tells her, ”you actually like it, watching me humiliate myself…you get to reject me all over again…there’s a part of you that enjoys it” (289).

Which brings us to the other side of the “rigidity” coin: delusion.

“Even made her laugh, stupid joke about Darcy having his pen mended.” - Rooney, page 221

Instead of being honest about stringing Peter along, Sylvia says she is letting him go free: “You should be grateful…you’ve been living your life…I haven’t” (289). Maybe Sylvia denies reality because she can’t tolerate imperfection. To be hurtful is to be flawed.

Once Sylvia accepts herself as imperfect, she can let down her guard and let Peter in. She sees clearly, even when she is in the wrong: “I don’t think I really wanted you to go on with your life, without me” (422).

Peter & Sylvia

This wasn’t our only delusion to overcome.

Peter and Sylvia think that if the car accident never happened, they would still be together, perfectly, forever. But that’s not true. All couples encounter difficulty at some point.

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton’s is also about a couple that loves each other, but just can’t be together *sigh*. Selden and Lily also blame the outside world.

At the end of both books, our leading men (Selden from House of Mirth and Peter from Intermezzo), walk to their ladies’ houses to profess their love. Both men are self-absorbed, which makes them ironically optimistic and unaware of the disaster that awaits. I color-coded how Rooney’s narration parallels Wharton’s.

Wharton writes: “[Selden] had cut loose from the familiar shores of habit, and launched himself on uncharted seas of emotion; all the old tests and measures were left behind, and his course was to be shaped by new stars” (342).
Rooney: “His mistakes all behind him. Raw relief to contemplate. He has extricated himself, the wrongs are in the past, however many, however complicated, and his life is beginning again” (360).

Upon arrival, Selden finds Lily dead of an overdose. Sylvia rejects Peter and accuses him: “deep down you really wish I was dead” (365).

Eeeek!!!!! What now???

Edith Wharton named her 1905 novel after this Bible verse. The couple in *House of Mirth* is similar to Peter & Sylvia.

Selden laments how “all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart” (Wharton 347). Uhh…Not really! Sitting alone with Lily’s body, can’t he see how his own “cowardice” and their “ugly uncertainties” (lack of mutual trust) are what really kept them apart? (Wharton 346). Only after Lily’s death—when unencumbered by reality—can their love actually exist.

Sylvia ended her and Peter’s relationship after the accident to “[save it] whole out of the ruin of their lives.” (Wharton 347). Like Selden, she chose a perfect delusion over an imperfect reality: “I just want you to remember me the way I was” (Rooney 135).

It’s much easier—and a bit delusional—to blame the outside world instead of admit we are complicit in our own destruction.

“He noticed too that there was a pot of pansies on one of the window sills, and at once concluded that the window must be hers…” - Wharton, page 342

Unlike Lily, Peter survives his overdose. With Sylvia and Peter alive and ready to be together, Rooney diverts from Wharton. She tries to bring this sacrosanct relationship down to earth. To actually name “the word which made all clear” (Wharton 347)………..

Throuple?????

I wish them luck, but to be honest, I don’t think the Sylvia/Naomi/Peter set-up is sustainable. I hope Naomi gets a job, rents her own place, and gets the hell out of there.

Come back next week for the climax of the book….Peter almost killing Ivan!