Fictional Matrimony

[sartorias]

Father’s Day is one holiday that definitely embraces the married man. I was thinking about that switch from prowling single guy to paterfamilias the other day, after I found the sequel to a novel I’d enjoyed

Comments

[merebrillante]

Not so much in the one book that was written, but in the many movies that featured them: Nick & Nora Charles.

Why did I like them so much?

Part of the reason may have been because I never saw them while they were courting. Think of all the TV series that have been ruined by getting the couple together at last -- Moonlighting, Cheers, etc. I don't think Beatrice and Benedick would have been as interesting after they got married as they were before the ceremony.

But part of the reason was because Nick and Nora were tolerant of each others' foibles -- he was a drunk, she was a stiff -- yet kept moving forward together towards a joint goal, catching the bad guy. I remember reading a legal opinion which described a marriage as two people looking forward in the same direction, rather than gazing raptly into each others' eyes. (Or something to that effect.) Courting couples gaze raptly. Married couples look forward, and the success of the marriage (at least on the page) depends on whether they're looking in approximately the same direction.

Interesting question. Thanks!

Recently I've been musing on what Elizabeth and Darcy would have been like after the wedding. I just can't get my head around that. The Courting Curse.

[justinelavaworm]

Yes, to Nick and Nora. Though I love the book more than the films.

I can't think of any others. Wow, that's terrible. I can think of excellent books about marriages, but they're about marriages falling apart.

Can't wait to see what other lj folk come up with.

[sartorias]

I've got to read the books. I adore the earlier films--and yes, I agree about them.

[justinelavaworm]

It's just the one book. Mr Hammett never deigned to write a sequel to The Thin Man. Worse luck!

I think the relationship between Nick & Nora is a bit more equal in the book than it is in the films where he's always a tad patronising towards Nora.

[merebrillante]

But then, she's a tad patronizing towards him in the films too. That's what makes it a nice match. If it was just one partner being patronizing, it wouldn't be terribly charming. But we as the audience get to sit back and sympathize with both their plights. She's stuck with a drunken reprobate, he's stuck with a tight-assed (though loosening-up) rich chick.

[matociquala]

Do long-term unmarried/inhuman couples count? Because, Sapphire and Steel.

I might also nominate the pastor and his wife in papersky's Tooth and Claw.

[twisting_path]

I watched some of the Nick and Nora movies about a year or so ago and was amazed at how much alcohol was consumed... LOL! Funny then, probably wouldn't happen now, so thank goodness they were made when they were.

Asta! Asta where are you?

Always wanted a dog like that.

[sartorias]

Those were the days when alcohol was the only acceptable way to relax social rules.

And getting drunk was socially acceptable.

[justinelavaworm]

Reckon! Those were the days . . . I once watched the first movie with some friends the plan was to match them drink for drink. We couldn't do it.

[madrobins]

I've read at least one mystery in which Mr and Mrs Darcy were the detectives. It was awful beyond the telling of it, alas (the idea wasn't bad, but the execution, and the author's failure to understand the characters of any of Austen's people, or the social constraints and rules of the age, made it dreary).

What about Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane? I find the book about the beginning of their marriage (Busman's Honeymoon) very satisfying because it's about two fully-formed, slightly neurotic, and highly intelligent people who have to figure out how to be married to each other. There's a real threat, at several points, that it won't work, and yet neither is the bad guy.

[merebrillante]

For me, that book (and by extension, the whole romance of Harriet Vane and Lord Peter) suffers from the Curse of Mary Sue, for DLS was perhaps the very first Mary Sue in existence. Luckily, she walked in the proud tradition of Pygmalion.

[sartorias]

I think Clarissa Harlowe was the first Mary Sue! *g*

[merebrillante]

Oh, I have not read that book! I must, I must, for I am in the midst of rereading all of Jane Austen for comfort, and will soon run out of Jane's novels to comfort me.

[sartorias]

I just finished my bazillionth reading of them all, too! (Then I just start over again, the next time I am down over uberstress.)

[sartorias]

There's a big clue at the end, when the two are wandering around catching up on all the talk that they were not able to do until engaged. You can see in the fact that they talk for hours, apparently, that they are intellectually engaged as well as physically attracted--but most tell is the private thought Elizabeth has that she has not yet taught him how to laugh at himself. One gets the sense that there will be a lot of laughter in their relationship as he learns to unbend--and it's clear he wants to learn to unbend.

[merebrillante]

*evil grin*

Or at least that he would like her to unbend him.