Romantic Love vs. Family Theme Analysis

In many ways, We Were Liars is a story of star-crossed lovers, as Cady is forced to choose between her all-encompassing love for Gat and her place within the family. Many of the characters—especially Harris Sinclair—see romance as inferior to their primary dedication to family, and in consequence, attempt to thwart any budding romance that threatens their family bond. Throughout We Were Liars, family ties and romantic love are portrayed as conflicting desires, and the novel illustrates the cost of such intense familial loyalty.

The Sinclair girls are daughters first, wives and mothers second. Harris and his money force them to privilege family over love, at times against their will. All of the Sinclair daughters are divorced, and while that may not be a remarkable occurrence in many families, in this family, there is clearly something sinister behind the failure of their marriages. While it is not stated explicitly why Bess’s and Carrie’s marriages ended, Harris clearly had little respect for either of their husbands, recalling that the Sinclairs had always been tall, “until Bess married that short fellow, and Carrie made the same mistake.” He does not approve of their choice of mates, and even says “good riddance” when discussing their divorces. His desire to control his daughters’ lives makes it difficult for the women to develop any sense of independence, especially in their love lives. When Carrie meets Ed, who is even more of an outsider because he is not white, Harris only grudgingly accepts his presence on the island, but does not consider him a suitable partner for his daughter. When Ed proposes to Carrie, she says no, because she knows that Harris will disinherit her if she marries Ed. When Gat talks to Cady about the proposal, he laments the fact that Carrie, a grown woman and a parent herself, would need her father’s approval to marry the man she loves. But once again, the Sinclair family bond conflicts with any sense of romantic love or devotion, as Harris does not want an outsider replacing him as the family patriarch. The Sinclairs are clearly threatening and unwelcoming to romantic partners who could potentially disturb the family dynamic.

Cady’s love for Gat is a significant threat to the family dynamic for many reasons, including the fact that he is a person of color and hails from a lower-class background that does not fit into traditional Sinclair family image. Cady and Gat fall in love almost immediately, and their feelings for one another are clear to others in the family and particularly upsetting to Harris. The patriarch is annoyed by the amount of time the two spend together, and feels the need to insert himself in their relationship in order to re-assert his control over the family. One day, when Harris happens upon Cady and Gat alone in the attic, he subtly warns Gat away from his granddaughter. “Watch yourself, young man,” he says, under the guise of ensuring Gat doesn’t hit his head on a low beam. “You could get hurt.” After this, Gat is aware that Harris is watching him and does not approve of their relationship, but Cady does not notice until much later, when her mother asks her to stop seeing Gat. In the conversation between the two of them, Penny tells Cady that “love doesn’t last,” revealing a powerful truth about her priorities as a Sinclair daughter.

Tragically, it may be Cady’s love for Gat that brings about his death in the fire. The Liars are convinced that Ed’s marriage proposal will mean that Gat will not be coming back to Beechwood Island. On one hand, if Carrie doesn’t marry Ed, the two may break up, which would also separate Gat from the Sinclair family; on the other hand, if Carrie were to marry Ed against her father’s wishes, none of them would be welcome on the island at all. This scares Cady, whose only contact with Gat is during the summers, and plants the seed for their decision to burn down Clairmont in the first place. In the Sinclair family, it appears that there is not room for these two competing forms of love—a deep emotional connection with someone outside of the family is at odds with Harris’s demands for complete devotion and loyalty.

Cady’s crush on Gat becomes the main source of tension within her family, revealing the Sinclairs as insular and controlling. Harris’s blatant distain for his daughters’ romantic partners is his way of reasserting his role as the central male figure in the family, and pushing out all possible interlopers. Harris’s need for control over the women of the family verges on incestuous, as he actively blocks their romantic endeavors and attempts to connect to men outside of the family. This idea is strongly reinforced in the tragedy that emerges from Cady’s relationship with Gat: Gat’s death could be interpreted as Cady’s punishment for rebelling against her grandfather and the family bond. We Were Liars, then, offers a criticism of insularity and blind loyalty, especially when it comes in conflict with healthy romantic relationships.