Connell leaves Dublin because he cannot afford the rent

Connell’s departure from Dublin is caused by a straightforward shortage of money, but the rupture it produces is shaped by what he cannot bring himself to ask. When his work hours are cut, he decides he must leave his rented room for the summer; because he delays telling Marianne that he hopes to stay with her, the financial problem becomes a painful separation neither of them discusses clearly.

The rent problem

Until April, Connell expects to work in Dublin over the summer and cover his rent from his wages. A week before his exams, his boss tells him that the workplace is cutting back his hours. He could still pay rent, just barely, but would have no money left to live on. He has long expected the business to close and is angry with himself for not applying elsewhere. After thinking about the problem for weeks, he concludes that he has to move out for the summer.

Niall, his flatmate, is kind about the decision and says Connell can have his room back in September. When Niall asks what will happen to Connell and Marianne, Connell answers vaguely that he does not know and admits that he has not told her. The practical arrangement is temporary, but Connell’s silence leaves its implications for their relationship unsettled.

The conversation he postpones

Connell believes Marianne would let him stay at her apartment until September. He is already there most nights, and it is difficult for him to imagine her refusing. Still, asking feels too much like asking her for money. The subject carries a class and family history neither of them addresses: Marianne’s mother pays Connell’s mother to clean the Sheridan home and do its laundry, and that money indirectly reaches Connell, who often spends it on Marianne. Marianne also regularly pays for dinner and theatre tickets without expecting repayment. He hates having to think about this circulation of money, while believing that Marianne does not think of it in those terms.

As exams end, Connell knows he must tell her he is leaving Niall’s room and ask directly whether he can stay with her. At a party at Sophie Whelan’s house, he and Marianne spend much of the evening by the swimming pool. He kisses her shoulder; she smiles, and nobody appears to notice. The party feels detached from the life he considers real, and his fear of losing Marianne grows alongside his plan to raise the rent question. When they go to bed, he does not wake her to talk. He decides to wait until after his last exam, extending the silence at the moment he most wants reassurance.

The departure becomes a separation

Two days after his paper on Medieval and Renaissance Romance, Connell visits Marianne’s apartment. While they drink coffee, he tells her that he cannot afford to pay rent in Dublin over the summer and will have to leave Niall’s place. Marianne asks when and learns that it may be the following week. She assumes he will go home. Connell confirms that he will, adding that he is not dropping out and will return in September.

Only then does he ask whether she will want to see other people while he is away. Marianne says that she will. Connell experiences her response as cold, but the conversation gives neither of them a fuller account of what the separation means. He has waited until he is announcing his departure rather than asking to stay; by then, he feels it is too late to make that request. He pours away his unfinished coffee and cries after leaving the building, grieving both the imagined possibility of living with Marianne and the relationship whose status has remained undefined.

Aftermath and interpretation

Within a couple of weeks, Marianne is seeing Jamie, a friend of hers whose father was directly involved in causing the financial crisis. Connell learns about the relationship from Niall’s text while at work. He withdraws to the back room and presses his forehead against a shelving unit. He interprets Marianne’s new relationship as evidence that she had wanted someone else all along, and imagines that she is glad he had to leave because he was broke. He also suspects that Jamie’s family wealth and social position make him a more suitable partner in Marianne’s world. Marianne stops answering Connell’s emails.

By July, Lorraine has heard that Marianne is seeing someone new. When she asks Connell when he and Marianne split up, he insists that they were never together and describes their involvement as casual. Lorraine points out that she understood them to have been seeing each other, exposing the gap between Connell’s guarded labels and her more direct view of relationships. He explains that he thinks Marianne’s new boyfriend is more in line with her social class. Lorraine doubts that Marianne would act on that kind of calculation, but Connell says he can only tell her what happened and leaves the room.

The departure therefore has two connected consequences: it ends Connell’s immediate life in Dublin for the summer and leaves the relationship vulnerable to assumptions neither character tests. The novel gives the material cause its full weight—reduced hours, rent, and the inability to afford ordinary living expenses—while showing how shame about money and delayed communication transform a temporary move into a lasting emotional break.