On unpaid labor – Joanna Biggs in LRB:

“In life, falling in love doesn’t always end well or ennoble the lovers, but in a Rooney novel it nearly always does. The biggest risk to her characters is that once they’ve found the minimal form of communism, they give up on the maximal, retreating to ‘a house with flowers and trees around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me’, as Eileen puts it in Beautiful World, Where Are You. Communism is often the subject of discussions between her characters, but her strongest arguments for a more equal, caring and just society happen on the level of plot, in the emotional experience of loving someone. Here is Frances of Conversations with Friends exchanging instant messages with Bobbi, her friend and former lover: me: capitalism harnesses ‘love’ for profit me: love is the discursive practice and unpaid labour is the effect me: but I mean, I get that, I’m anti love as such Bobbi: that’s vapid frances Bobbi: you have to do more than say you’re anti things Smart undergraduates like them can recognise the exploitation but can go no further without experience. Could there be a way to capture some of love’s profit for themselves? There is naivety in their essay-crisis declarations: familiarity with Marxist-feminist theories of love and labour doesn’t, after all, provide any protection from catching feelings in the real world (and it isn’t charming to say to a lover that love is unpaid labour).”

(…)

“I like Rooney’s books, and am excited when a new one comes out, and one of the many things I like about them is that almost every time two characters have sex – and it’s pretty often – they discuss contraception. Such conversations are realistic, even if they aren’t included in the sex scenes in many other books. It makes me trust her.”

(…)

“In Intermezzo, Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, a conversation takes place over the expiry date on a condom. Ivan Koubek, who is 22 and grieving the recent loss of his father, has had one in the zipped pocket of his suitcase for a while. Margaret Kearns, who is 36 and recently separated, suggests he fetch it and check the date on the foil (the packaging reads 07/25. They’re safe). The long-undisturbed contraceptive is a sign that neither of them has been expecting their mutual attraction, during an autumn drive home from a simultaneous chess event in an arts centre in Leitrim.”

(…)

“ At 22, Ivan feels his best chess-playing days could be over. ‘It is better to feel hopeful and optimistic about one’s life on earth while engaged in the never-ending struggle to pay rent,’ he reasons, ‘than to feel despondent and depressed while engaged in the same non-optional struggle anyway.’ Love’s energy might be needed at certain times in your life not so that you can foment revolution, but to get through the day.”

(…)

“ It used to be that the only people afforded an emotional life, and given latitude to write novels about falling in love, were the leisured classes, people with money enough to be liberated from daily presence at the factory or on the farm. Rooney’s novels stand for the notion that ordinary people should also be allowed the tumults and comforts of an emotional life, along with a sense that their existence is important because it is precious to the people they love. This, it seems to me, is one of the ideas underlying communism.”

Read the review here.

Love and sex as communism in reality, or at least a way of approaching the utopia without an army and a state is very appealing, indeed.

More conversations about contraception before sex might be needed as well, in reality and in literature.
Can we talk about contraception?

The couple, married for too long, can start a conversation about it in order to refresh their marriage.

Love, not the marriage itself is unpaid labor. It’s not the work that is needed in order to keep the factory of family life running. It’s the tenderness itself, the steaming or not so steaming sex et cetera.

All desire is just a benign form of communism.

It’s impossible to oppose that kind of communism. The consequences are not that clear, but that’s a minor detail.