if you’re not paying attention to how poverty is thematically woven here then you’re not reading right!

Even the ML yandere specifically choosing to play poor instead of white-knighting the FL from her shitty life is on purpose to display the correlations and understanding between characters about socioeconomic class they live in. For me, this was the strongest appeal to reading another manhwa about a torrid affair and revenge fantasy because of how important poverty was to the characters complexity and dynamics.

Mincheol is a titular character emblematic of South Korea’s uber-misogyny that’s been accelerating against women but also a clear example of how socioeconomic standards also drive huge influence into how family members can abuse others within the unit. Sure, he loved her at some point— deep down probably still does— but he despises her now because he associates her with poverty, his poverty to be exact, the poverty HE dragged her into. He also simultaneously sees her as his property to debase and humiliate because she is also still his poverty. Because there’s nothing left that a poor person will have besides the fact they’re poor. And Na Haesoo has assimilated into that poverty class with such diligence and attention that it disgusts him now. Seeing as he’s a character who goes out of his way everyday to play into appearances, to not let others be aware of how poor he actually is.

This is why I also feel a sense of frustration when I see comments get mad at Na Haesoo for not behaving in a certain way, especially because the misconception to many might be that she’s behaving this way to fit into a certain shy-girl archetype that you see in many stories. I understand because I tire of those too. But what I think what makes Na Haesoo different is because her character and behavior is not driven by being raised ‘right’ or that she’s a ‘maiden’ but an intentional depiction of what society deems a poor person should behave. She embodies their idealized version of poverty. The embodiment of poverty.

Just as there is an unspoken idea of a ‘perfect victim’ there is unspoken idea of the ‘perfect poor person’. The type of individual that is hard-working, not loud, doesn’t beg, doesn’t complain about their situation even though it gets worse. The world hates poverty and hates the poor, the homeless, while simultaneously behaving as if they have their best interests in heart— the rich do nothing but drive a stronger poverty gap worldwide all while blaming the poor for not being hardworking enough. Capitalism needs to incentivize the idea that your circumstances are created by you, and you alone— and that only you can save yourself. Ignoring the countless of evidence and studies, showing that poverty is systemic, abusive, generational, and parasitic.

The poor cannot complain about their lives, they have no right to. They also should not go out showing themselves as poor, which is why the surge of anti-homeless infrastructure is everywhere in major cities. The poor cannot indulge themselves in luxury, because that would show they’re frivolous and unfocused on getting out of poverty. The poor shouldn’t have children, because they are forcibly ruining their lives by doing that— despite the fact that they actively block the fundings poor people need to support their kids or block access to planned parenthood to have them avoid bringing children into the picture in the first place. They also cannot be poor anymore or else that’s criminalized (yes, in certain states in America (for example) homeless is now criminalized.)

See what I’m getting at? The poor cannot live and they cannot live at peace with being poor either, but you cannot sell them a dream that poverty can be eradicted (even though it very much could). The ideal impoverished is given the message “Stay poor, stay hidden, and die quietly.” — Tara Colon.

And this is the energy Na Haesoo exudes to the bottom of the bottle. It’s not an archetype of a maiden who is too lovesick to leave her man. It’s a thirty year old women who is trauma bonded to a man that uses and abuses her financially to make a feasible living for himself while she chucks away at their debt little by little all because he is the man she has been with for years, has not experienced or been involved in anything else but his orbit for years, and has nothing to her identity or herself outside of him because she dedicated her whole life to him. It’s more akin to a 1950’s housewife story, really.