41 pages • 1 hour read
Colleen HooverVerity
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Sex
Sex features heavily throughout the novel. Verity documents various sexual experiences with Jeremy in her autobiography. Verity views sex as a means of connection. She measures her intimacy with Jeremy in the amount of sex they have. For Lowen and Jeremy, they first bond emotionally. Their first sexual experience with each other solidifies the intense emotional bond they already feel. Lowen feels a release and empowerment after having sex with Jeremy that emboldens her. As an embodiment of their connection, sex allows Lowen to move with a newfound confidence. In addition, sex serves as a means of procreation. Verity uses this as a way to control Jeremy’s emotions as evidenced when she lies about being pregnant with a third child to avoid Jeremy’s displeasure with her. For Lowen and Jeremy, their act of unprotected sex, which leads to Lowen’s pregnancy, offers them a fresh start.
Doubling
Twins often represent two sides united in their common form. Hoover best exemplifies this in the Crawford twins, Chastin and Harper. Lowen remarks on the differences between the twins as one is always smiling while one never smiles. These twins come to personify the two sides of Verity. Because she loves Chastin, Verity offers her unconditional love and affection. Her disregard for Harper triggers Verity’s darkest and most dangerous self. Both sides exist in the Verity that is documented in the autobiography. Hoover mirrors this doubling in the foil characters of Lowen and Verity. Writers with traumatic pasts with her mothers, Lowen and Verity both engage in relationships with Jeremy and become mothers themselves. Despite their similarities, Verity serves as a representation of the truth, often harsh and brutal. Lowen, whose name means joy or noble, symbolizes a protection of innocence.
Mothers
Mothers are at the center of this novel. Verity’s complicated relationship to motherhood becomes a central plot point that introduces the essential questions of the text. Both Verity and Lowen have trauma from difficult relationships with their mothers, who both abandon them. Lowen struggles to recognize her own worth because of her mother’s guilt and shame around her sleepwalking. Verity attempts to maintain her own individualism separate from the all-consuming nature of motherhood. Hoover offers a commentary on the truth of motherhood and what it demands while also exploring the responsibilities mothers have to their children and their development. As Verity’s depiction of motherhood grows bleaker, Lowen’s maternal instincts lead her to have unprotected sex with Jeremy and, ultimately, to carry his child. Lowen’s pregnancy at the end of the novel offers a fresh start and new beginning from the death and destruction that dominates most of the novel.
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By Colleen Hoover
