Love is boring
In 2007 I somehow apparently missed that both the New York Public Library and the Guardian newspaper declared that Wuthering Heights is the greatest love story ever penned. I am not sure how the New York Public Library decided on this list, but on the other side of the Atlantic, the question was put to a vote.
Wuthering Heights. Can this be right? The English-speaking world regards a story of multi-generational abusiveness, jealousy, brutality, pettiness, revenge, and madness as the greatest tale of love?
Did they poll teenagers? Opera librettists?
The runner-up on Guardian’s list is Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which strikes me as a story of two likable but imperfect people who both mature in ways that make them worthy of their mutual affection. But I’m going to utter a heresy here: once I remember Mr. Darcy in the days before it is impossible to think of him without thinking of the brooding Colin Firth, I consider him perhaps improved and moral, but not precisely loveable. I had always preferred Mr. Bingley.
Shakespeare shows up on both lists with Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. How the latter has become the paradigmatic love story has always eluded me: their childish passion is much less interesting to me than the political statement about tribalism. The former is a pleasant, endearing tale where love is granted by fairies. It’s not that this doesn’t work as a love story, it’s simply that it’s not about falling in love, per se. Of course, love at first sight isn’t about falling in love either.
The truth is, real love and mutual felicity makes for a dull story. The fairytale ends with "... and they lived happily ever after," it does not start there. Conflict makes for a good story, but does not generally cultivate domestic bliss. My own love story is remarkable in its unremarkableness: I think the last time Coriander had anything resembling a heated discussion, let alone a fight, was last year. And while the field of our philosophical, aesthetic, and moral agreement is vast, we still fill hours and hours of conversation daily.
Fulfilling, but not very interesting. And I tend to elide our more dramatic, conflicted past. I don’t know what kind of narrative that is, but it’s certainly not a love story.
What characteristics, do you think, make a story about genuine, satisfying love with a likewise interesting plot?
I think stories of unrequited or perhaps “misaligned” love elicit the most empathy, humanity, and understanding. Some examples: Katherine Heiny, Fiction, “How to Give the Wrong Impression,” The New Yorker, September 21, 1992, p. 35. Gwen (in the 2nd person voice) and Boris, graduate students, are roommates, but Gwen consciously engages in a fantasy and lets people infer that they are romantically involved. Or perhaps the love that Clarissa Vaughn shows for her depressed, world-weary, terminally-ill friend Richard in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours.
But mutual love? It’s a difficult feat to portray both protagonists as loveable, and, furthermore, discovering that the interlocutor is also loveable. Is it acceptable for a protagonist to be blind to the possibility because of a distracting affection for another person, or perhaps a conflicting and noble priority such as duty? What love story would you most like to have experienced?
Wuthering Heights. Can this be right? The English-speaking world regards a story of multi-generational abusiveness, jealousy, brutality, pettiness, revenge, and madness as the greatest tale of love?
Did they poll teenagers? Opera librettists?
The runner-up on Guardian’s list is Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which strikes me as a story of two likable but imperfect people who both mature in ways that make them worthy of their mutual affection. But I’m going to utter a heresy here: once I remember Mr. Darcy in the days before it is impossible to think of him without thinking of the brooding Colin Firth, I consider him perhaps improved and moral, but not precisely loveable. I had always preferred Mr. Bingley.
Shakespeare shows up on both lists with Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. How the latter has become the paradigmatic love story has always eluded me: their childish passion is much less interesting to me than the political statement about tribalism. The former is a pleasant, endearing tale where love is granted by fairies. It’s not that this doesn’t work as a love story, it’s simply that it’s not about falling in love, per se. Of course, love at first sight isn’t about falling in love either.
The truth is, real love and mutual felicity makes for a dull story. The fairytale ends with "... and they lived happily ever after," it does not start there. Conflict makes for a good story, but does not generally cultivate domestic bliss. My own love story is remarkable in its unremarkableness: I think the last time Coriander had anything resembling a heated discussion, let alone a fight, was last year. And while the field of our philosophical, aesthetic, and moral agreement is vast, we still fill hours and hours of conversation daily.
Fulfilling, but not very interesting. And I tend to elide our more dramatic, conflicted past. I don’t know what kind of narrative that is, but it’s certainly not a love story.
What characteristics, do you think, make a story about genuine, satisfying love with a likewise interesting plot?
I think stories of unrequited or perhaps “misaligned” love elicit the most empathy, humanity, and understanding. Some examples: Katherine Heiny, Fiction, “How to Give the Wrong Impression,” The New Yorker, September 21, 1992, p. 35. Gwen (in the 2nd person voice) and Boris, graduate students, are roommates, but Gwen consciously engages in a fantasy and lets people infer that they are romantically involved. Or perhaps the love that Clarissa Vaughn shows for her depressed, world-weary, terminally-ill friend Richard in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours.
But mutual love? It’s a difficult feat to portray both protagonists as loveable, and, furthermore, discovering that the interlocutor is also loveable. Is it acceptable for a protagonist to be blind to the possibility because of a distracting affection for another person, or perhaps a conflicting and noble priority such as duty? What love story would you most like to have experienced?