57 pages • 1 hour read
Lisa JewellWatching You: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A 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
Complex Identities and the Power of Labels
In Watching You, identity is complex and truth is subjective. Each character grapples with their own perceptions of reality and their place within it. Without access to an evident, objective truth, characters rely on labels to help them understand themselves and communicate with each other.
Joey struggles to understand herself and move forward in her life until she is able to dissect and understand her own identity and motivations. Later in the novel, Joey comes to terms with what the novel implies is the correct label to her infatuation. Before this moment, she perceives “a hundred voices” shouting conflicting messages in her head and compares her psyche to a load in a washing machine “churning and turning” (242). This metaphor illustrates Joey’s internal chaos and reflects her inability to form a cohesive identity. Her self-perception is constantly shifting and conflicted. She feels unable to access “her instincts” and so “[take] control of her own destiny” (242). The pressure to embody multiple facets of herself erodes her agency. While waiting for Tom in the hotel room, she “suddenly [realizes] that [...] the burning flame of desire that had informed her entire existence for the last three months” is “simply an itch” (263). Reframing her desire frees Joey to choose whether or not to scratch the itch instead of being carried away by desire.
Through the character of Tom, the author addresses the many ways that labels and perceived identity affect the lives of the townspeople. Different points of view reveal different ideas about who Tom is, and all of these ideas collide in Freddie. Freddie thinks his father is simultaneously “a great man” and “one of the worst men I know” (238). The dichotomy leads him to desire a “truth-based bad fact” because “it’s hard having two opinions, two types of feeling, both at the same time” (238). He starts to investigate his father in the hope of finding a concrete reason to decide between the two ideas. It doesn’t work, and while the novel disproves the biggest myths about Tom, it never offers to define him. Each character’s version of him is unavoidably subjective.
Freddie fares better in his quest to understand himself, finding a framework that bridges several aspects of his identity. As a young child, Freddie was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, but his father concealed this information from Freddie’s schools and invited Freddie to ignore it. He celebrated Freddie’s “remarkable” brain and suggested that he “not get hung up on labels and names” because he “will always be so much more than a label” (233). Freddie then forgot the episode entirely until he asks Romola to the dance. She asks him if he, too, is an “Aspie” because “some of the things [he says] and the way [he says] them and the way [he stands] and the way [he looks] and lots of things about [him]” (233). Her identification of shared characteristics between herself and Freddie suggests a recognition of shared experiences and challenges. They experience a moment of mutual understanding that illuminates how labels can foster empathy and connection, providing a common language to articulate shared experiences. When later speaking to his father, he admits, “I think I make some really bad mistakes with people, and I misunderstand them, and it might be useful for me now, maybe, to have some extra support. I’d like my label please” (260). His assertion challenges the notion that labels are inherently limiting, demonstrating their potential to empower individuals. For Freddie, labels offer a sense of direction that helps him navigate his world and seek appropriate support.
However, truth is always shifting and subjective in Watching You. Tom’s fear of social stigma and reductive stereotypes is legitimate, but it also risks denying Freddie’s experiences as a person with autism. A label can be a double-edged sword. While it can lead to pigeonholing, it can also provide a means to understand oneself better and communicate one’s experiences more effectively. It is through Freddie’s understanding of his diagnosis that he finds reason in his own behaviors and comes to terms with his own identity.
Social Appearances and Deceptive Façades
Watching You explores the theme of social appearances and the deceptive façade they often create. Through the perspectives of different characters, the novel explores the weight placed on appearances and their ability to mislead the viewer, hinting at a deep dichotomy between what is seen and what is hidden.
The pressure to “fit in” takes a toll on Nicola, and her obsessive desire to “look ‘natural’” interferes with her ability to do so. Nicola’s image is “her obsession,” and she desperately attempts to adapt to the norms of each new town as their family moves around. She uses the appearance of other women as a guide, “forensically taking in every iota of [their] sartorial presentation” and constantly tweaks her own appearance in response (58). When the Fitzwilliams move, “a new set of rules would apply according to the type of area and his mother would have to start trying to fit in all over again. Not that she ever did” (58). She constantly chases an elusive sense of belonging. Her attempts at fitting in, however, only serve to further alienate her from the very group she seeks to join. Freddie sees the cracks in her meticulously crafted façade. Despite her relentless striving, Nicola is still “all wrong.” Nicola’s lack of facility with images and social performances exposes these scripts, the elaborate codes prevalent in different communities that shape their expectations. Moreover, even Nicola’s awkwardness is misleading. It makes it easy for characters in the novel to dismiss her, never suspecting that she might be an abusive wife, bully, and murderer.
The appearance of places can be as misleading as physical appearances. The novel’s settings suggest normative fantasies of domesticity, sometimes belying the true nature of their inhabitants and the events that transpire within them. The first scene of the book takes place in the room where Rebecca murdered Nicola, “an innocuous room, bland even. A kitchen like a million other kitchens all across the country. [...] Not a kitchen for dark secrets or crimes of passion. Not a kitchen for murdering someone in” (3). The crime shatters the image of a happy home, and the juxtaposition emphasizes how outward appearances can mask darker realities. The text treats the flat Bess shares with her mother similarly. Jenna looks at the pretty and feminine flat Bess shares with her mother, thinking, “It wasn’t the sort of flat where a girl who got pregnant by her head teacher at fifteen would live” (210). She further reflects that Bess isn’t that “sort of fifteen-year-old girl,” and her mother isn’t that “sort of mother” (210). In fact, the dark suggestion proves false. Bess is neither pregnant nor victimized by a teacher. In both instances, the pleasant and ordinary settings provide no insight into the true nature of their inhabitants or the events that occur within them. There is no easily identifiable “sort” of person or place associated with dark deeds. Whether these crimes are real, as in the case of the kitchen, or imagined, as in the case of Bess’s apartment, the settings themselves provide no defense and offer little insight.
The novel underscores the idea of the potentially deceptive nature of surface appearances. They are not meaningless—they are heavily loaded with meaning—but this meaning has little to do with truth. The façade of domesticity often plays a key role in the thriller genre, revealing dark situations amongst everyday circumstances. Watching You is no exception, and the novel creates a web of characters and situations that misleads the reader to false beliefs.
Fantasies of Adulthood
Watching You investigates the idea of adulthood, particularly the dichotomy between fantasies of maturity and actual responsibility. The two teenage characters, Jenna and Freddie, are “sick of being the kid” (189). Jenna feels trapped at home with her mother but simultaneously worries about being displaced by the system if people learn about her situation. Freddie loathes the constant moves occasioned by his father’s work. He wants “more autonomy, more power, more say in how things happened” (189). Each wants the authority of adulthood, but the flip side of authority is accountability. The older character, Joey, revises her image of adulthood throughout the novel. As a young woman grappling with the loss of her mother and the new responsibilities of marriage, she embodies the struggle between the escapist allure of fantasy and the weighty demands of adult responsibility.
Joey’s journey into adulthood is marked by self-doubt and frustration as she struggles to reconcile her idealized image of adulthood with her perceived failures. She longs for the unqualified love and acceptance of her dead mother. Visiting her grave, she says, “I really thought that I was growing up at last, Mum... But if anything, I’m regressing... I’m still me, Mum [...] Joey the fuckup [...] and I wish you were here because I know that was always enough for you” (69). The raw vulnerability in this confession accentuates the harsh reality of adulthood: that it does not automatically confer wisdom or maturity, but often intensifies one’s awareness of personal inadequacies. In this state, she sexually fixates on Tom because “every minute she spent thinking about Tom was a minute not spent thinking about her crap job and her overgrown roots and her stultifying fear of taking the necessary steps toward a solid and fulfilling adulthood” (243). Her infatuation serves as escapism, and she uses the substantially older man as a symbol of maturity. Instead of taking proactive measures to achieve the life she wants, she fantasizes. She also idealizes Nicola, Tom’s wife, as a “proper grown-up woman,” and her interactions with both Fitzwilliams disappoint her.
After Joey realizes that her great “passion” for Tom is just an “itch,” her understanding of adulthood changes, as does her perception of Tom. She realizes that his need for help is more urgent than hers and offers him a sympathetic ear. At the end of the novel, Joey reflects back on the experience, remembering “the smallness of him as he headed from the hotel room” (314). The larger-than-life caricature has deflated. She realizes “that being a grown-up is not about getting married, about smart flats and reading groups; it’s about taking responsibility for your own actions and the consequences of those actions” (315). She contrasts superficial, cultural markers of adulthood with true maturity: accountability.
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By Lisa Jewell
