58 pages • 1-hour read
I Found You
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of emotional abuse, graphic violence, sexual violence, and mental illness.
Memory as the Foundation of Identity
In I Found You, Jewell slowly reveals the hidden identities of Frank/Graham and Carl/Mark. Their cases starkly contrast each other: Frank has lost his memory while Carl hides his past. In the end, Jewell uses these examples to illustrate how identity is multi-layered; truly knowing someone means knowing all the layers of their memories and actions.
When Alice finds Frank, he is in a “fugue state […] a kind of amnesia […] usually caused by an emotional trauma” (36). This state was triggered by Frank seeing Mark, remembering that Mark killed his sister and father, abducting Mark, and strangling him—but Frank’s mind completely blocks these events out. This adds to the memories lost from the events of 1993, removing all sense of who Frank is in the present day.
When Frank regains his memories, he doesn’t like his identity as Gray. This is a nickname he used since he was a teenager. He lived in the grayness of lost identity and in a gray realm of morality: one where he violently takes revenge. So, Gray decides to go by Graham, his birth name. The layers of his identity are represented by his three names. Frank is the essence of himself: a blank slate. Gray is his traumatized childhood and revenge-fueled identity. Graham represents a healed and better person: “the man [he] was supposed to be” (337). However, Frank still likes being called as such by Alice as an act of affection.
Frank can be compared and contrasted with Carl. The people in their lives don’t know their real names. When Lily and Alice meet, they compare how Frank and Carl are not the names given to the two men at birth. Mark became Carl to avoid his criminal past, that is, to avoid the identity associated with assaults and murders. Carl is a mask for Mark, rather than a fugue state. Gray felt like the persona that Mark used around people to cover up his true nature was also a mask: “Even his hair color was too uniform, Gray felt, as though he could tug at it and Mark’s whole face would come off, revealing his true identity, like a Scooby-Doo villain” (109). Jewell uses an allusion to a television show popular in the 1990s, when Gray met Mark, to describe the false identity Mark presents. Mark’s multiple layers don’t all have names, like Frank’s do; the hidden core of Mark as a psychopath can be contrasted with the blank slate persona that Alice names Frank.
Lily’s mother describes the layers of identity as a metaphorical onion. She says, “People reveal themselves to you a layer at a time” (131), and you should only get married to someone after witnessing and accepting all of their layers. Gray at his worst is more acceptable than Mark at his worst. This is why Alice continues to love Frank while Lily turns Mark over to the police and ends their marriage.
The Relationship Between Memory and Love
The love that Alice and Lily have for men with hidden pasts can be compared and contrasted with the love between Alice’s parents, who are losing their memories to Alzheimer’s disease. While watching over them, Alice observes that their love endures even when their memories are missing. Her own journey teaches her that restoring memories can radically change love.
Alice’s parents shared many memories and a deep knowledge of each other’s pasts and inner lives. Once they develop Alzheimer’s, “They know nothing of any significance whatsoever. But they do know they love each other” (210). Alice sees them hold hands and say “I love you” to each other. Their bond of love endures even when other memories fade. This influences Alice’s opinions about loving someone who has memory issues.
Alice is willing to take a chance on falling for Frank because she has seen people who have lost their memories give each other love and affection. At first, Frank “was not a man at all, just an empty box in which to put whatever she wanted. She’d imbued him with qualities and character traits that suited her” (293). Frank being emptied of memories and identity means Alice can project her ideals onto him. Their relationship changes when Frank remembers Kirsty, who “could be anyone: his wife, his daughter, his first love, his sister […] The point is that he loves her. Loves her present tense. Which means she can no longer pretend that Frank exists in a bubble. She can no longer pretend that he is exclusively hers” (197-98). Alice and Frank have to guard their feelings, rather than give into their mutual attraction. They stop having sex in case Frank already has a romantic partner.
When Frank regains his memories and knows that he is single, Alice is free to love him. Her instincts, as well as Griff and Romaine’s instincts, that Frank is a good partner for her turn out to be correct. However, Frank has to work on healing his trauma before he is capable of a romantic relationship. Once he is out of the psychiatric ward, and identifying as Graham, he feels ready to be back in Alice’s love life.
On the other hand, Carl is a facade that Lily falls in love with. She permits him to keep his memories a secret because “Day to day he is wonderful” (205) and because he gives her the chance to live in the UK. She doesn’t probe into his background and therefore doesn’t even learn his real name until events force him to reveal it. Her love for him changes dramatically when she learns about his past. After Alice explains what Mark did to Kirsty and Tony, Lily knows “It is over. Her love affair. Her adventure. Her love for a man she never really knew […] she had not given herself the time to see the worst of Carl Monrose but now she has been shown it, and no, she cannot love a man like that” (319). Once the layers of his personality are revealed, Lily no longer wants to be with him and reports him to the police. Their love dies because it was based on false pretenses.
Graham’s mother, like Lily’s mother, believes that all the layers of a person have to be revealed for love to endure. Pam says to Kirsty: “You meet someone, you feel an attraction, then you spend some time with them and sometimes you realize that the attraction was only skin-deep. So you move on” (153). This is how Lily handles her relationship with Mark; she moves on. Alice, like her parents, stays with a person who has memory issues. The nature of resurfaced memories and how the other person reacts to them determine whether or not love will endure.
The Intersection of Class and Criminality
Jewell explores the theme of generational wealth and entitlement through Mark’s family in I Found You. Property ownership is a key signifier of wealth in the novel: Kitty owns houses in two prestigious locations while the middle-class Ross family rents a cottage for their vacations. Property ownership translates into who believes they have ownership over society—and over other people. Mark and his rich friends from Harrogate are able to get away with criminal acts because they are wealthy. The novel shows that the categories of wealth and ownership aren’t fixed: Once Mark and Kitty are caught, their socioeconomic status changes.
Mark’s entitlement is introduced through descriptions of his family’s property. Kitty’s house is the most expensive one in Ridinghouse Bay. It sits at “the furthest tip of the cliff” (151) and was previously owned by “a famous novelist” (151). It has an orangery, peacocks, and other animals. In this environment, Mark is spoiled. He is able to intimidate Kitty into allowing him to have parties with drugs at the house. Being upper-class means Mark has the money to access illegal substances, like ecstasy, and to escape any consequences for obtaining and selling them. His family’s money also ensures that Mark escapes consequences for sexually assaulting girls. Mark’s wealth leads him to believe that he is entitled to whatever he wants free of consequences, especially from lower-class women, like Kirsty.
When Kirsty rejects Mark, it contradicts everything he believes about himself and his entitlement. In his mind, she doesn’t have the power to reject him, and he does not fear the consequences of asserting his will over hers. Not only does he assault and kill Kirsty, he kills her father and threatens Kitty until she allows him to bury Kirsty in the garden of her house in Coxwold. This is an upper-class neighborhood in Harrogate; the garden is private: The police would be reluctant to search the premises. Kitty’s properties make it easy to hide Mark’s crimes, as well as deny that they happened. She spends her time in Ridinghouse Bay so she doesn’t have to look out at the garden where Kirsty is buried.
Once the police learn about Mark’s crimes, and Kitty being an accessory to them, their socioeconomic status changes. Kitty, out on bail, sells both houses at a low price and rents a place in Ripon. The place is large enough to accommodate her many possessions and is described as “genteel” (340). She is only reduced to middle class and remains far above poverty, or what Gray calls “urchins” (171). If Mark loses his trial, he will become a prisoner without freedoms that even the lower class enjoys. Jewell doesn’t tell the reader the outcome of Mark’s trial. His socioeconomic class might keep him out of prison or make sure he gets into a nice prison with special privileges. Having generational wealth means possibly getting away with drug use and distribution, as well as assault, and possibly even murder.
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