The Ethics of Care in Sally Rooney's Novels: Between Self and Other

Abstract

Sally Rooney's three novels, Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021), count among the so-called ‘crisis-era’ novels. All relate paradigmatic examples of forced upheaval in the lives of young adults facing the realities of post–Celtic Tiger Ireland. Her fiction delves into complex friendship–love–sex relationships and she scrutinises the emotions of her young characters, who are invariably overwhelmed by dissatisfaction, distress and pain. Considering the self as fundamental to the neoliberal form of subjectivity, Rooney's aesthetics and style are explored in this chapter. Drawing on theories of neoliberal culture and affect, the various expressions of caring for the other and the soothing of tension and conflict are pinpointed in her novels. Finally, the ethics of care are assessed in Rooney's production and the way in which that behaviour epitomises the precarious balance between self and other in recessionary Ireland.