Norma Jeane and Sidney Haring’s teacher-student relationship

Norma Jeane Baker and Sidney Haring’s teacher-student relationship begins in literary criticism and develops into a private, recurring intimacy whose limits are tested but never crossed in physical action. The novel sets Haring’s professed restraint against his increasingly intense response to his fifteen-year-old student, while presenting Norma Jeane as absorbed in literature rather than sexual courtship. When she suddenly leaves school near the end of the year, their meetings stop without explanation, and Haring is left with questions he cannot bring himself to ask.

A Literary Bond Begins

In a private visit after class, Norma Jeane brings Haring an untitled poem written by her mother. He examines it closely, finding its rhythms uneven and some of its rhymes forced or absent. His critique is exacting: he argues that poetry must be heard as music, not merely inspected on the page, and questions the poem’s obscure reference to an “Argenteo Tratto.” The encounter establishes him as a demanding teacher, but it also gives Norma Jeane a reason to return with writing and questions of her own.

Haring is twenty-nine, physically slight and already balding, with prematurely white hair and a limp from an accident in his youth. He is a young husband supporting his family on a public-school teacher’s meager salary; he and his wife have a four-year-old daughter and an eight-month-old son. The narration places these domestic responsibilities beside his attention to Norma Jeane, making the difference between his public role and private response part of the relationship’s tension. Although he is often dour and sarcastic in class, he tells her eagerly to bring more poems, whether her own or her mother’s.

Meetings After School

During the winter of 1941, Haring, Norma Jeane’s favorite teacher at Van Nuys High School, begins seeing her two or three times a week after lessons. Their conversations center mostly on the novels and poetry he lends her: works by Emily Brontë and Charlotte Brontë, Pearl Buck, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sara Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Robert Browning, whom Haring especially admires. He continues to criticize Norma Jeane’s poems, which he appears sincerely to believe show promise. She no longer brings him her mother’s poetry.

Their contact becomes more private through a small practical habit. One winter afternoon, Norma Jeane realizes she is late and that Mrs. Pirig is waiting for her to help prepare dinner. Haring offers to drive her home. The trip from the school to the Pirig home takes five minutes, and afterward he regularly gives her a ride so they can continue talking about literature. The short journey extends their conversations beyond the classroom, but the text gives no indication that Norma Jeane uses the rides to invite a different kind of relationship.

Unequal Boundaries and Unspoken Desire

Haring insists to himself that the friendship is innocent: Norma Jeane is his student, and he is her teacher. He has never touched her. Yet his account of restraint is qualified by imagined or fleeting physical contact—a hand brushed while he opens the car door, her hair grazed, her scent involuntarily inhaled—and by the admission that he sometimes lets his gaze linger. The contrast is central: the relationship remains physically unconsummated, but Haring’s attention is not neutral. He returns to his life as husband and father while privately dwelling on Norma Jeane’s smile and body.

The imbalance is sharpened by the novel’s description of Haring’s perception. He notices that Norma Jeane wears clothes that are too small and moves with what he takes to be unconscious sensuality. The narration records his sexualizing gaze, then sets it against the student he encounters in conversation: calm and shy, seemingly interested in the books he assigns and in the poems she writes. Over the months of their friendship, he detects no sexual flirtation or double meanings in her words. When her poems address an enigmatic beloved, he cannot assume that the “you” is himself. His longing therefore depends partly on uncertainty, not on any clear declaration from Norma Jeane.

Disagreement and Departure

One exchange briefly turns their literary companionship into an emotionally charged confrontation. Haring says he distrusts politicians, including President Roosevelt, and suspects the government manipulates news about the war. Norma Jeane responds with unusual vehemence: she trusts Roosevelt because she has heard his voice on the radio. Their disagreement takes place in Haring’s car near the Pirig home, with the railway and distant foothills in view. Norma Jeane looks directly at him, breathing shortly, and tells him she hates him and thinks him a very unpleasant person. Haring laughs and starts the car. After dropping her off, he is sweating heavily and recognizes the force of the impulse to seize and hold her that he did not act upon. His restraint is real in action, but the scene makes clear how intensely it is being tested.

At the end of May, three weeks before the school year ends, Norma Jeane suddenly withdraws from Van Nuys High School for personal reasons. She neither attends Haring’s English class nor writes to explain her decision. The principal informs the teachers of her official withdrawal, leaving Haring stunned and wondering why she would leave so close to promotion without speaking to him. He repeatedly lifts the telephone to call the Pirigs and ask after her, but cannot bring himself to complete the call. His final self-instruction is to avoid compromising himself and keep his distance.

The Relationship’s Unresolved Meaning

The relationship ends not with a confession or a confrontation, but with an absence: Norma Jeane disappears from Haring’s school life, and the reason remains unstated in this account. That silence prevents the reader from treating his fantasies as proof of her intentions. The intimacy they share is grounded in books, poetry, criticism, and the repeated five-minute drive; the sexual meaning belongs chiefly to Haring’s private response. His inability to call after her departure completes the pattern of desire held at a distance, while leaving both the cause of her withdrawal and the possibility of any further contact unresolved.