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.
Themes
The Writer as Creator and Destroyer
There are several ways Lowen and Verity double each other throughout the novel: via their status as writers, the locks placed outside their bedroom doors, their teeth marks on the bed post. Perhaps the clearest example of their connection is the way they are presented as writers who have the power to create and destroy worlds. Verity’s success as a writer built the house that she lived in with Jeremy and her children, but she later blamed that success for the disintegration of her relationship with Jeremy. Through her autobiography, she constructs herself as the ultimate destroyer: a Medea figure who will murder her own children to stay close to her husband. Though this construction is a fictional exercise she uses to explore her own guilt and trauma over the deaths of her children, her words are so convincing to Lowen and Jeremy that they kill her because of them.
Lowen begins the novel as a self-effacing and nearly stunted writer who refuses to step into her full potential. However, by the end of the book, she has taken over Verity’s life. She is now the author of Verity’s books, the mother to her child, and the lover to her husband. From one angle, Lowen’s character arc is an example of growth and empowerment. From another, it is a nearly vampiric transformation, an example of a younger woman stepping into the life created by a successful woman who may be aging out. Lowen slowly builds her new life by inserting herself into the shell left by Verity, and she takes the ultimate step into this new life by encouraging Jeremy to kill her.
Violence as a Release
Each of the three primary characters in Verity is locked in a psycho-sexual triangle from which the only release is violence. Interestingly, Lowen and Jeremy first meet in the shadow of a brutal accident. Later, Hoover describes the violent actions of Verity Crawford as she attempts to murder her children. Lowen feels threatened as she attempts to discern between reality and fantasy, but by the end of the novel she is complicit in its most brutal act of violence: the murder of Verity. Thus, each character engages (or is depicted engaging, in the case of Verity) in acts of violence.
Even Jeremy, a devoted husband and father, engages in acts of extreme violence that result in the injury and death of his wife Verity. In the depths of despair and anger, Jeremy turns to acts of choking twice to express his unbridled emotions. He turns to violence immediately and without hesitation. It is only due to Lowen’s interference that Jeremy stops himself from once again following through with his intended violence. Lowen also relies on violence to express her frustration and anger towards Verity. She erupts as she attempts to navigate the tense environment of the Crawfords’ Vermont home. Verity creates a fictionalized version of herself that engages in dark and horrific behavior as a means of releasing the torrent of deep emotions she wades in after the death of her daughters. Hoover reveals flawed but well-intentioned characters who seek an outlet for the onslaught of emotions that overwhelm them. Hoover demonstrates the innate violence within all humans who seek to process their emotions in often dangerous ways.
The Impact of Trauma
All of Hoover’s characters carry with them a burden that hinders them from connecting in meaningful ways. This burden is a result of real trauma. No matter the origin of the trauma, the effect is long-lasting and impacts each character’s ability to communicate effectively and build strong relationships. This common experience unites disparate characters and reflects the human experience.
As the main protagonist of the novel, Lowen navigates the trauma of her mother’s recent death, her experiences as a caregiver in the last year of her mother’s life, and her ostracization as a child due to her sleepwalking. These experiences render Lowen detached from the world around her. She praises the anonymity of New York City as it offers her the ability to avoid connecting with those around her. She limits her success as a writer due to the fear of rejection she carries from childhood. This all changes when Lowen is forced to accept her new role as a co-writer for Verity Crawford. She is removed from her comfortable environment into the less crowded setting of Vermont where she faces the direct consequences of her trauma responses. It is her traumatic experiences that forge her connection with Jeremy. They find commonality in their experiences with grief and find refuge in each other. This depth of understanding expands even to Lowen’s perceived antagonist Verity whose own trauma from the deaths of her children lead her to unexpected outlets. Each character faces the impact of trauma as they attempt to overcome barriers to their deeper growth and understanding. Each character’s trauma impacts choices that are made.
Trauma Twists Truth
As writers, both Lowen and Verity understand fiction and how it relies, in part, on reality to make it convincing. However, they also struggle to articulate the truth clearly because of the respective traumas they have experienced.
Verity depicts herself in her autobiography in her most obsessive, dangerous form. It is a particularly cruel view of motherhood. Hoover hints at Verity and Lowen’s individual and complicated relationships with their own mothers. Both experience rejection from their mothers at an early age. For Verity, this contributes to her difficulty to accept her role as a mother. This leads Verity, according to the autobiography, to value sex above her responsibilities as a mother and to take violent actions to terminate her pregnancies. For Lowen, this leads her to drown in self-pity to distance herself from others. Lowen obfuscates what happened in her past to avoid confronting the painful reality. Verity deceives those around her to appear perfect.
As Lowen reads through and processes Verity’s manuscript, she builds a twisted understanding of who Verity is and what truly happened to the Crawford twins. This understanding leads Verity and Jeremy to ultimately kill Verity. Hoover includes a plot twist at the novel’s conclusion that undermines the justifiability of this action. Lowen’s choice not to share this truth with Jeremy further twists the truth. Lowen protects Jeremy’s belief that his violent actions were noble and justified while bearing the burden of knowing Verity’s innocence.
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By Colleen Hoover
