Rewriting the Books of Love

By Caitlyn Hallman

I have spent hours, nay, days trying to figure out this whole love thing.  It seems to me that everyone I know, I am no exception in this case, has massively unrealistic expectations when it comes to love.  We just take it for granted that love should be dynamic, exciting, and passionate, and we assume that if it isn’t all those things then it isn’t love.  But dynamic, exciting, and passionate things are not always the healthiest for our mental states.  People often run around distressed, distracted, and depressed in the name of love.  They purposely make themselves miserable for love.  Why do we do this to ourselves?

Although this is not the exclusive reason for our self-torture, I believe some of our delusions of love come from cultural factors.  As a comparative literature major, I noticed how (for lack of a better term) fucked up literary relationships are.  “Duh!” you may say.  “Of course they have problematic relationships, it’s part of the plot.”  However, what I am suggesting is we are bombarded by all these dysfunctional couples from early childhood on, and we begin to believe how love is supposed to act.  Looking only at English literature, here are a few famous examples.

Romeo and Juliet

Why do we look at this pair as a paragon of romance?  They’re two horny teenagers for Christ’s sake!  Obviously neither one of the pair is thinking with their head, because if they were they would have come up with a better solution than suicide.  There is no reason to kill yourself over someone you just met a few days ago, no matter how mean your parents may be.  With a little more thought, they would have realized that what they were experiencing was not true love, but merely sexual attraction.

Wurthering Heights

Romance.  Can someone please tell me where the romance is in this novel?  I certainly can’t find it.  Basically, the only thing I see going on is Cathy and Heathcliff spend the entire novel abusing each other.  Even after Cathy dies, she still finds it necessary to come back as a ghost to torment Heathcliff.  Let’s face it, she’s a bitch, and he’s a bastard, and everyone is much happier once they are done with the lot.

Jane Eyre

What’s going on with the whole crazy wife in the attic act?  Certainly if you found out at your wedding that your husband-to-be was still married to a crazy woman who has already tried to kill you, you would run as far away from that man as possible.  There’s absolutely no reason why a sensible person would ever consider visiting such a man again, let alone marry him (after he was widowed) even if he was blinded, paralyzed, and ever so much nicer.

A Tale of Two Cities

First, I will admit that I am passionately in love with Sydney Carlton (I’m sure this puts me on the same level as the crazies I’m writing about).  However, he is a few cards short of a full deck.  Let’s review some of his behavior: he declares his love to Lucie, only to instruct her not to love him in return, then he spends approximately the next seven years mooning over her, and in a final act devotion, Sydney then goes to the Guillotine in the place of Lucie’s husband (who just so happens to look exactly like him).  Romantic, yes, but wouldn’t you just be ever so slightly disturbed if someone you knew acted like this?

But, is all literature completely hopeless when it comes to love?  No, I did manage to find one positive example…

Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Barret and Mr. Darcy are perhaps the only normal couple in all of English literature.  Although they start out hating each other, ever so slowly they both realize their mistake.  They take walks, they talk, they go to parties, in other words, they “date.” Like becomes love, and they are married, and stay married, and have by all accounts a normal married life.        

So what’s the moral of my piece?  I suppose there isn’t really one; maybe what I want to propose is a re-evaluation of romance.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you would stop celebrating mental illness and start celebrating sensible behavior?  We should stop chasing after Romeo, and say hello to Mr. Darcy.