46 pages • 1 hour read
Maggie O'FarrellThis Must Be the Place
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Isolating Effect of Secrets
Content Warning: This section discusses abortion, death, grief, and trauma.
Secrets inherently prevent connection and create space between people. In This Must Be the Place, Daniel’s secret about Nicola causes a literal separation from his wife and children. Claudette’s secret about her whereabouts and real identity separates her from the world. Some of the other secrets permanently end relationships. However, there are two secrets that are not strictly negative: Claudette’s hermitage allows her to heal and rediscover her identity, while Teresa’s secret love has an element of purity that allows her to safeguard part of herself in a life that threatens her inner self. The thrust of the novel is that secrets create unnecessary divisions within and between people; however, they also function as protections for the inner self.
Daniel’s secret separates him from Claudette and his children. He has spent most of his adult life avoiding thinking about Nicola. However, in the process of discovering the truth about her death, he begins to understand how his relationship with her and his fears about her death dictated most of his actions. He married Niall and Phoebe’s mother largely out of a reaction to the end of his relationship with Nicola. He avoids contact with Todd and loses their friendship to avoid facing his secret. He avoids thinking about Nicola, but that secret weighs on him throughout his relationship with Claudette. When he finally learns the truth and shares his secret with Claudette, they are initially closer, but his guilt related to the secret isolates him from her even after he tells her what happened. They separate because neither of them can move past the secret.
Claudette’s secret isolates her from the world. She escapes from the constant surveillance and infidelity with Timou and the acting world, but her haven prevents her from interacting with the rest of the world. For instance, when Daniel goes to New York for his father’s birthday, Claudette stays home. When Ari goes to boarding school, she never goes to see him out of a fear that she’ll be exposed. When Daniel doesn’t immediately come home from New York, it is the fear of her exposure that drives her to Paris to hide with her mother. Instead of claiming her own power and insisting on the life she wants, she isolates herself to avoid discovery. Claudette even keeps the secret of her past stardom from her younger children, which threatens her close relationship with her daughter Marithe.
The solution to the isolation caused by secrets is to share them. When Daniel finally shares his secret with Claudette, she initially understands and comforts him. The infidelity related to his breakup with Nicola drives a wedge between them, but ultimately, they’re able to move beyond that fracture because they dispel the secrets. Their bond is solidified largely because Daniel knows Claudette’s secret from the start and promises to keep it. His willingness to protect her hidden inner life is one of the elements that allow them to rebuild even after they’ve divorced.
The Power of Language
Daniel’s profession as a linguist introduces the concept of language as a revelatory force in the novel. He focuses on words, their meanings, their common use, and their evolution. The novel similarly focuses on how language reveals identity. Daniel’s understanding of language at a deep level gives him the ability to connect with Ari by understanding his stammer and meeting it with patience. The power of Daniel’s knowledge of language reveals his kindness and strength as a father and father figure. Claudette was raised in a bilingual household, so Claudette, Ari, Pascaline, and Lucas share a language that is inaccessible to Daniel. Marithe picks up languages quickly, often understanding the words without the context. Phoebe struggles to understand words, which initially creates a gap between her and her father. Both the use of language and its failures reveal key elements of character and plot in the novel.
Daniel’s career as a linguist features prominently in his relationships with Todd and Nicola. When he first meets Todd, his attic room is filled with words, and their first conversation concerns whether the changes in language represent “decay or evolution” (157). Daniel “like[s] to embrace the idea of change” in language (8), which reveals his personal desire to change himself and evolve beyond his past. Nicola knows that Daniel’s devotion to precise language makes it nearly impossible to discuss the abortion. All the words that apply seem either too clinical or too emotional, and so she doesn’t tell him how she feels. Her inability to express her complex emotions means that the truth is concealed rather than revealed.
The French spoken by Claudette and her family excludes Daniel, which reveals their connection and his place as an outsider. Marithe’s ability to understand the language while missing the context leads to a revelation for Claudette about her mother’s opinion of Daniel. Marithe’s sense of understanding and simultaneous confusion reveals the rift in Marithe’s family that threatens their comfort and security. Marithe’s extreme reaction to her uncle and grandmother’s conversation demonstrates that language can be revealing even—and perhaps especially—in its attempts to obfuscate.
Ari’s stammer is a difficulty with language that Daniel understands and responds to with patience. When Ari has to interrupt because his stammer is held back, Daniel lets him. That understanding reveals a solidity in Daniel that Ari can trust. The failure of language can be as revelatory as the precise use of language. Ari’s stammer represents a frustrated half-expression—unlike Nicola’s refusal to use the wrong words or Marithe’s partial understanding, Ari needs to be allowed to stall and interrupt in his use of language. Daniel’s ability to patiently allow for both gives Ari the confidence to work on and overcome his stammer to express his full identity later in his life.
The Dissociating Nature of Trauma
One of the common effects of trauma is dissociation—when a person separates from reality to varying degrees. At various points in the novel, characters are described as being split from themselves or being an alternate version of themselves. Whether that severing of identities causes trauma or is caused by trauma, the thematic relationship between trauma and identity is clear.
Daniel is seen by himself and others as being two people at once. Pascaline says to Lucas that Daniel “is so…different on the inside from how [he is] on the outside” (134). She goes on, “[O]n the surface, Daniel is so charming, yes, so charismatic, but underneath it is a whole other matter…I have always felt that Daniel has…a strong streak of destroying himself” (135). Daniel himself sees this split in his identity: “To all appearances, I am a husband, a father, a teacher, a citizen, but when tilted toward the light I become a deserter, a sham, a killer, a thief. On the surface I am one thing, but underneath I am riddled with holes and caverns, like a limestone landscape” (33). When Lucas brings Daniel divorce papers, there is a moment when “Lucas can see that the other Daniel, the Daniel they all know and love, who reappeared for a moment there, has been subsumed by this other, frightening, furious alter ego” (328-29). Daniel and Pascaline recognize the potential for trauma to split Daniel entirely and release his self-destructive side. The trauma from Nicola, Teresa, and Phoebe results in Daniel splitting from his primary identity to become frightening and dangerous even to those he loves. Only his children can encourage him to reconnect with reality.
Phoebe and Marithe both experience moments of dissociation. Phoebe says, “I don’t know why…I’m feeling so strange. Like I’ve been cut down the middle and I’m in two places at once, or I’m getting radio interference from somewhere, or I’m just a shadow…and the real me has gone off somewhere on its own” (59). She describes very specifically the sense of being separated from her body and being in two places at once. Similarly, at the beginning of adolescence, Marithe experiences a sensation that “someone had dimmed the lights, as if she [i]s viewing her existence from behind a glass wall” (361). The trauma for both girls is the loss of their father. For Phoebe, it occurs so early in her life that the cause of the dissociation is as far away and unreal to her as the experience of dissociating. Marithe, on the other hand, can identify Daniel’s absence as a catalyst that brings on her dissociative episodes. There is no clear resolution to this split in Daniel’s daughters. Phoebe dies young, and the novel ends without resolving Marithe’s struggle. However, Daniel’s return suggests a return to wholeness and the hope that Marithe can be guided back to a cohesive reality.
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