“the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft”

The phrase “the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft” is Connell’s image for what he perceives as a void at the centre of Marianne’s being. It makes his fear vivid, but the image also points back toward his own attachment: even as he imagines her as unreachable and without self-preservation, he admits that he has deliberately cultivated his power over her and cannot bear to lose it.

The Image of the Void

Connell imagines waiting for an elevator: its doors open, but instead of a car there is only “the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft,” extending endlessly downward. The comparison gives form to his sense that Marianne is missing some primal capacity for self-defence or self-preservation, something that would make other people’s responses comprehensible to him. He describes an encounter with her as leaning in and finding that “everything just falls away in front of you.” The image is therefore not simply an account of sadness; it renders the prospect of reaching Marianne as a frightening absence of resistance or ground.

The metaphor’s architecture matters. A lift is expected to arrive and carry someone safely between levels; an open shaft without a car turns that familiar expectation into danger. Connell’s waiting ends not in arrival but in exposure to an apparently bottomless space. His comparison makes the uncertainty of Marianne’s condition feel both intimate and immense, while revealing the limits of his own understanding: he can name the void he fears, but cannot explain or overcome it.

Fear and Devotion

The image appears within Connell’s attempt to account for his foul mood and for what has happened between him and Marianne. He thinks that their history has produced confusion and misery and that he cannot help her, then immediately sets that helplessness against an extreme declaration of attachment: he would lie down and die for her at any minute. That devotion is the only thing about himself that makes him feel worthwhile. The elevator shaft thus belongs to a divided account of their relationship: Marianne seems to him unreachable, yet his own sense of value is bound to her.

Connell’s language also makes the void an image of the distance between seeing and knowing. He considers an apparently factual explanation of their sexual encounter, but recognizes that it would leave out their history and the power he has had over Marianne since school. He recalls how she responds to his look or touch, colouring and going still as if awaiting an order. The metaphor of the shaft sits beside this recognition: the woman he has imagined as lacking self-protection is not merely an unknowable abyss, but someone whose vulnerability to his influence he has understood and cultivated.

The Image’s Contradiction

Connell compares his hold over Marianne to “a key to an empty property, left available for future use.” The parallel with the elevator image sharpens the unease in both figures. In one, he fears an emptiness he cannot reach; in the other, he acknowledges keeping access to Marianne for himself. His language makes apparent helplessness and exercised power coexist. He cannot reconcile himself to losing his influence, even while believing that nothing good has ever come of their connection.

The phrase therefore does not establish Marianne’s inner life as an objective emptiness. It records Connell’s fearful perception at a moment when he is embarrassed, angry, and trying to interpret the relationship. Its force comes from that tension: he casts her as a terrifying absence of self-preservation, yet recognizes her particular responsiveness to him and his own role in maintaining it. The open shaft gives his dread a shape, but the surrounding reflection shows that the fear is entangled with his desire to remain consequential to her.