44 pages • 1 hour read
Jen BeaginBig Swiss
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A 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
Physical and Psychological Trauma
Big Swiss explores the connections between physical and psychological trauma, as well as the long-term effects of these traumas when they are left untreated.
Big Swiss is a character who tries to confront her trauma and therefore overpower it. She doesn’t want her traumas to define her. She believes that people who do so are weak. Big Swiss rejects the stigma of the victim by reclaiming her narrative on her own terms. Big Swiss goes to Om for sex therapy, but he is interested in targeting her trauma as part of the reason she is having trouble with orgasming. Om notes that traumas follow his patients through their lives and often affects areas originally unrelated to the sources of their trauma. Big Swiss’s trauma is the horrific assault she experienced at Keith’s hands. She has a marriage, a good career, and a stable home. The assault did not define the way she viewed her life, though Om insinuates that her inability to be defined by her trauma is its own blockage. Her affair with Greta is separate from that trauma–it is not because of trauma that Big Swiss engages in a relationship with Greta. Notably, the way Big Swiss deals with her trauma is the opposite of how Greta deals with hers. Big Swiss is a foil to Greta—each woman deals with her trauma in completely opposite ways.
Greta’s trauma is alluded to throughout the novel. The reader knows that Greta’s mother died by suicide when Greta was 13 years old, and they are told that Greta was a victim of sexual assault. While Greta’s trauma is alluded to, her trauma is not discussed in detail until the novel’s climax. Greta has twice been diagnosed with emotional detachment disorder, a likely byproduct of her mother’s death by suicide. In emotional detachment disorder, people have a difficult time engaging with their emotions and the emotions of others. Emotional detachment protects Greta from ever suffering a loss like the pain of the loss of her mother. Greta internalized her mother’s final note, believing she was responsible for her mother’s death as a teenager. Greta doesn’t acknowledge this trauma until the end of the novel, when Om helps her remember the note. Greta has long tried to block out the details surrounding her mother’s death. Greta flees from her trauma, while Big Swiss fights her trauma and believes she has mastered it. Beagin uses the women’s different responses to explore different responses to trauma and how they may shape one’s life. Both women are shaped by their trauma in ways they are not aware of, arguing that one response to trauma is not better than the other; both women grow and heal from their trauma, facilitated by their affair.
Greta’s avoidance of her trauma has major consequences for her mental and physical health generally. For example, Greta had broken her foot around the same time that her mother died by suicide. Decades later, Greta believes that there is a shard of glass stuck in her foot, which is a phantom piece of glass that her mind has concocted to deal with a stressful situation. The phantom glass evokes her broken foot, which connects her stress over Big Swiss to her unresolved traumas over her mother’s death. Beagin uses this complex chain of symbolism and association to explore the messiness of trauma: Greta’s affair, completely detached from her mother’s death, still evokes physiological responses tied to her trauma.
Manipulation and Power Dynamics
The novel’s main conflict centers around unbalanced power dynamics; Greta lies to and manipulates Big Swiss through her insider knowledge on Big Swiss’s personal life. The two women live in drastically different socioeconomic conditions, placing social power in Big Swiss’s hands.
Voyeurism, in which people watch the object of their desire from afar, is a way of avoiding public power dynamics while creating a secretive power dynamic for the voyeur. A voyeur avoids a consenting relationship in favor of spying on the object of their desire, placing all the power in the dynamic in the voyeur’s hands. Greta’s initial conversations with Big Swiss are one-sided because Greta already knows Big Swiss’s internal life. Due to this foreknowledge, only Greta has the power to project her desires onto Big Swiss; Big Swiss has no way of contributing her own power to this one-sided relationship that first exists in Greta’s mind and fantasy. Though Big Swiss initiates the relationship with Greta, Greta uses her foreknowledge to shape Big Swiss’s desires to her will and achieve the affair of her fantasies.
Greta’s power is based in lying. When these lies are revealed, the power dynamic shifts in Big Swiss’s favor. Greta lies about her age, creating a fabricated identity as Rebekah. She lies to Big Swiss about her job, about her life, and about her feelings. The lies keep Greta in control of the relationship, but her lies become difficult to keep up with. Greta also brings up terms she hears in Big Swiss’s therapy sessions that are particular and specific to Big Swiss’s experience. Often, Greta does this accidentally, but she quickly covers it up with a lie. This makes Big Swiss falsely believe that Greta knows and connects with her on a deep level, as though Greta can read her mind and soul. Big Swiss relies on the power of lies as well, often to use Greta as a pawn in her own marriage. Big Swiss lies to Luke so that she can maintain her outwardly perfect marriage and the future she’s planned for while using Greta to smooth over her marital woes and inability to orgasm. Big Swiss forces Greta to lie about herself to Luke and conform to Big Swiss’s desires. Manipulation through deception is used by both women to gratify themselves at the other’s expense.
This novel also deals with the privilege of socio-economic power. Big Swiss is wealthy, well-educated, has a respectable career, and has the stability and social credit of a heterosexual marriage. Greta is almost 20 years older than Big Swiss but lives with her friend in a dilapidated house, and has a low-paying job with no benefits or guaranteed future work. Greta argues that Big Swiss has a privileged life she can fall back onto when she’s hurt. Greta herself has no recourse when the affair implodes. Greta believes that Big Swiss enjoys being with her because the stark difference in their socio-economic conditions is exciting to Big Swiss. The phenomenon of rich people pursuing sexual relationships with impoverished people for the thrill of the class divide is known as “slumming.” Big Swiss frequently comments on class differences between her and Rebekah to Om, suggesting that there is some merit to Greta’s beliefs. Big Swiss carries privilege that Greta doesn’t, which ultimately gives her power over Greta and the ability to treat their relationship, and Greta, as inferior to her marriage.
The Complexity of Human Connection
At its core, Big Swiss is about the complexity of human connection. Greta is desperate for real connection even though she is often emotionally detached from others. Greta flees from every relationship throughout the novel: her engagement to Stacy, her attractions to Seymour and Matteo, and her friendship with Sabine, whom she holds at a distance. Her relationship with her dog Piñon is important to her because Piñon is easier to handle than the complex needs of another human being. Greta uses her voyeurism as a proxy for authentic human connection, revealing the extent to which Physical and Psychological Trauma can interfere with human connection. Human connection is difficult to achieve in Big Swiss, though it is a necessity that each character desires and must navigate on their own terms.
Greta can’t reflect reasonably and honestly about herself due to refusing to confront her trauma, so she has poor insight into the lives of others. She misconstrues her voyeurism for insight. Greta often confuses her projection of what people are versus what they are. For example, she doesn’t read Keith correctly. She mistakenly believes that he shot her dog, for no other reason than Keith is a Big Swiss’s abuser and Greta is in a relationship with Big Swiss. Keith is a chief antagonist of the story, yet only within Big Swiss’s life. Greta fancies herself a victim of Keith because of their connections to Big Swiss, yet Keith is largely indifferent to her existence. Keith only hurts Luke when Luke antagonizes him, suggesting that Greta’s worries about Keith are entirely borrowed from Big Swiss’s trauma. Greta’s inability to properly understand the motives and internal lives of others is suggested to be rooted in her psychological trauma. By linking the complexity of human connection back to trauma, Beagin argues for a view of human connection that views present connections through the lens of past traumas and relationships.
The setting of Big Swiss is also important for exploring the complexities of human connection. Hudson is a small and eccentric town in which people gossip and have six degrees of separation between them and everyone else. People in Hudson are known to sexually intermingle liberally, highlighting a communal sense that human connection is flexible and important. Om’s sessions with his patients give Greta and the reader insight into the interconnected lives of Hudson residents. Greta’s mistake in coercing Big Swiss is that she underestimates the connectivity of the town. Because Greta isolates herself in Sabine’s house, she doesn’t realize that everyone in town knows everybody’s business. Greta projects her desires onto Big Swiss, believing that only she is privy to Big Swiss’s narrative. In actuality, everyone in Hudson knows about Big Swiss’s past and her present affair. Hudson is a hyper-social community, which Greta learns when the human connections built through such a tight-knit community help to expose her lies.
