63 pages • 2 hours read
CJ LeedeMaeve Fly
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 Power of Personal Connection
While the novel centers on Maeve’s descent into rage, it also presents a solution to her violent nature: personal connection in the form of Tallulah, Kate, and Gideon. After being disowned by her parents because she was “entirely different from and completely incomprehensible to them” (11), Maeve finds a life with her grandmother, Tallulah, whose character is much more in line with Maeve’s. For years, Tallulah supports and guides Maeve, both in how to hide her predatory nature (she encourages Maeve to think of herself as a wolf) and how to give in to it, hiding her murders by destroying the bodies and surviving undetected. With Tallulah, Maeve feels for the first time a breakdown of “that invisible barrier between you and them” as she finds “the will to exist in a world so wholly unsuited for [her]” (76). In this way, Tallulah provides Maeve with a sense of belonging for the first time in her life, their shared nature a key component of that connection. Similarly, Maeve finds support through Kate during her first years in Los Angeles. Maeve believes that Kate is a truly good person. Ironically, given that Maeve is the narrator and protagonist of this novel, she sees Kate as the “protagonist” of their shared lives, recognizing that Kate’s kindhearted nature and romantic successes make her a more likely protagonist for a conventional romance novel. When Maeve is devastated by Tallulah’s illness, Kate skips her audition to stay with and comfort Maeve, with Maeve acknowledging that she “do[es] not know how [she] would have gotten through that evening and night without Kate” (137). Central to Maeve’s relationship with both Kate and Tallulah is her belief that they know her for who she truly is; in this way, they provide her with the emotional and physical support that she needs to survive her difficult life.
In Gideon, Maeve develops a romantic and physical attraction to a person for the first time in her life. As she allows herself to open up to him, she acknowledges that “he makes [her] forget. He makes [her] feel…less. And more. So much more” (176). Then, when they are alone in the coffin in the dark, she “allow[s herself] the indulgence that is leaning into him” because she “need[s] this” and actually “like[s] it, with him” (176). The “it” that Maeve discovers is the comfort of being with Gideon, lying with him in the coffin and discussing their lives—something she has never done with anyone else, not even her grandmother, whom she loves but is afraid to touch. The physical comfort and connection that Maeve finds with Gideon becomes a key component of her ability to quell her rage and survive the loss of Tallulah and Kate. When she kills him in the novel’s climactic scene, her tragic arc is complete. Having murdered the one person who could have understood her, she has fulfilled her own prophecy: She is doomed to be alone forever.
Despite Maeve’s aversion to forming relationships and her insistence that she is destined to be alone, these three characters emphasize the importance of personal connection in life. As Maeve struggles with Tallulah’s illness, Kate’s new path in life, and her own darkness and rage, she finds in each of these people the support and comfort that she desperately needs to survive.
The Distinction Between the Private Self and the Public Persona
Maeve Fly explores the idea of hidden identities and the difference between the private self and the public persona. From the beginning of the novel, Maeve accepts as fact that everyone is performing when they are in public. She notes that this is even more true in two specific places: Hollywood and the princess park. In this way, the novel’s setting reflects this theme. Maeve observes that in Hollywood, which is full of aspiring actors who play characters for a living while also performing the glamour and success they hope to attain, “the trying, the striving, it poisoned the air, it perfumed it. It was everywhere. It was intoxicating. Everywhere, all the time, people are pretending. But here, in Hollywood, it is so much more” (15). Similarly, Maeve’s job is to dress as a princess, in a park that is surrounded by people indulging their fantasies of becoming someone different. In this way, the park is a metaphorical representation of the idea of performing in life: Maeve and her coworkers hide their real personalities behind the personae of princesses, while the park’s visitors hide who they truly are their public personae.
For Maeve and Gideon, this idea is taken to the extreme as they hide their identities as serial killers. Their true nature is represented by the motif of the wolf and the lamb. After Maeve throws a lamp at an actor and gets fired from her job as a studio assistant, Tallulah explains to her, “[T]he wolf can never be seen again. Not by me, and not by anyone. You cannot be what you are and survive” (76). In other words, Tallulah emphasizes the importance of Maeve—and by extension, Gideon—hiding who she truly is so she can fit into society. In less extreme ways, the novel suggests that everyone has a public persona that is distinct from their true, interior self. Despite the fact that everyone has hidden desires, sorrows, anger, and more, they are expected to keep most of these feelings hidden in public to fit in and be a part of society. In this way, Maeve is simply an extreme embodiment of the basic tension between the individual and society.
The Duality of Human Nature
From the very start of the novel, CJ Leede presents this novel as Maeve’s own story of her life. Maeve points out typical storytelling tropes in her life—identifying Kate as the “protagonist” and Liz as the “nemesis”—framing her life as a story she is telling to the reader. She acknowledges that she should provide “backstory” but that she is not going to do so because it is “overrated.” With this setup, the novel then explores the ideas of good and evil and the ways that Maeve’s life subverts the typical expectations surrounding good and evil in stories.
Central to this theme is Maeve’s character of the ice princess—an allusion to the character of Elsa in Disney’s popular Frozen series. The ice princess is a metaphor for Maeve’s self-image. Maeve explains the duality of the character she plays, how she “is fundamentally good and wants nothing but good for everyone around her. But when her power is repressed and quieted for too long, it overwhelms her” so that she destroys her kingdom (138). In this way, Maeve believes that the ice princess “becomes the antagonist by embracing her power” and thereby “defies archetype” (138). Maeve asks, “Can we even really call her a princess if she is also the villainess?” (138-39). In this way, the ice princess goes against the typical princess narrative: Instead of relying on men to save them, as Cinderella and Snow White—the only other two princesses identified in the park—do, she embraces her power and saves herself. These characteristics are all reflective of the type of person that Maeve is. As the antihero in her own story, she tries to repress her violent nature but ultimately embraces it, thereby dictating and controlling her destiny instead of allowing others to act for her. In this way, both Maeve and the ice princess have stories that complicate the binary of “good” and “evil” found in earlier narratives like those of Cinderella and Snow White.
The romance between Maeve and Gideon further confounds any clear boundary between “good” and “evil” characters. While Maeve and Gideon are both murderers, Leede still aims to evoke sympathy and hope for the survival of their relationship up until their final moments together. As Maeve spirals into violence, she is pulled back one last time by Gideon’s support and her belief that he truly understands who she is. Ultimately, however, the voice of Tallulah inside Maeve’s mind wins out over the actual voice of Gideon. Tallulah has taught Maeve to be loyal to her inner “wolf” above all, and in this climactic moment, she chooses the wolf, thus dooming herself to a lifetime of isolation. Instead of a typical story where the “good” person wins and finds happiness, the novel argues that good and evil exist in a continual state of conflict within any individual psyche. Maeve’s tragedy is that she chooses rage and self-protective violence over human connection.
Ultimately, Maeve Fly presents the reader with two different stories: the traditional female protagonist, represented by princesses like Cinderella and Snow White who are emblems of pure goodness, and the more subversive, complicated protagonist in the form of Maeve. Maeve has learned to think of her violence as synonymous with independence and strength—evidence that she will never be taken advantage of like her best friend Kate—but her downfall makes clear that price the price of invulnerability is permanent isolation.
