Fictional Couples...

[fajrdrako]

From October 23, 2008:

Got this idea from Literary Feline during her recent contest: "Name a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like–sometimes narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’s just me."

I'd like to be able to say Lymond and Philippa from the Lymond novels, but as it happens, I always wished Lymond would get together with Kate rather than Philippa. I'm not unhappy with the plot as it progressed, but Kate was my favourite female character in the books, and I liked her with Lymond. Other fans have explained to me why Lymond couldn't possibly have ended up with Kate, and you know what? I think that's ridiculous. The only reason he didn't choose Kate is because that isn't what the author wanted.

So. Eliminate them as my choice. Who to say. Beatrice and Benedick? Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester? Eugene Wrayburn and Lizzie Hexham? Archy and Mehitabel? (No, no, only kidding.)

Okay, my choice - no surprise, I'm sure - Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith from Shards of Honour and many of the other Lois McMaster Bujold novels.

I was amused to see when I looked at the Booking Through Thursday website that the first person who posted anything picked as their first choice Lymond and Philppa. And I liked all their other choices, too. I should make a Top Ten list.

Lymond and Philippa might be on it, if I am feeling particularly tolerant.

Comments

Slightly Off Topic

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

You may be interested in the proposal to add a Best Graphic Story category (http://community.livejournal.com/anticipation_09/10676.html) to the Hugo awards.

Re: Slightly Off Topic

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Hmm, not a bad idea. Becuase it seems wrong to have graphic novels and regular novels thown into the same category as if they were the same thing. And these days, there are enough graphic novels to fill the gap and then some. I'm ready to nominate Echo already.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The trouble is, I tend to like one character in a pairing more than the other. A lot of the novels I like involve seriously dysfunctional/destructive relationships, in which I want to rescue one party.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: I would choose Alec and Tess, if she weren't such a fool who can't see his steadfast generosity and devotion because of her obsession with the sanctimonious little humbug Angel, and I cannot forgive her for the carving-knife incident (even though my h/c complex goes into overdrive).

Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda: Antoinette and Michael. Even if it is (implied to be) commercially-based and she's possibly a spy (so much about her doesn't add up!). But it's nice to see a story with a younger man-older woman pairing.

Turgen'ev, On the Eve: Elena and Insarov – unhappy posh Russian girl meets consumptive Bulgarian revolutionary.

Lefanu, Carmilla: Carmilla and Laura – lesbian vampire and victim. The ending is heartbreaking: a decade after Carmilla's destruction, Laura (by now 28, confirmed spinster) still sometimes finds herself turning, half-afraid, half-hopeful, for the sound of her footsteps…

One of the few successful pairings is in M John Harrison's two latter Viriconium books: Ashlyme (he doesn't seem to have another name!) and Audsley King. He's a portrait painter who looks like Swinburne; she's an artist, too – consumptive, a cross between Aubrey Beardsley (hence name) and Paula Modersohn-Becker. (She also seems to have a lesbian relationship with an overweight tarot-card reader, and there's an ex-husband she prefers to pretend is dead.)

And of course, the ultimate:
The Master and Margarita, in Bulgakov's book of the same name. Also, they are surrounded by the most wonderful supporting cast, including the greatest demonic cat ever to prowl the pages of literature.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

A lot of the novels I like involve seriously dysfunctional/destructive relationships, in which I want to rescue one party.

Nothing wrong with that!

I like your choices, insofar as I have (so far) read them.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

It seems to be my default setting that at least one party has consumption, and/or ends up with a sharp pointy object in the thorax. (Both in Michael's case!)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Luckily that gives you plenty of scope.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Indeed. A girl can go far with a h/c complex and a weakness for damaged beauty in both sexes.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

And so you do. Make the most of it!

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

And that's a lovely Rufus icon you have there!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Any Rufus icon would be a lovely Rufus icon IMH and biased opinion.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Oh indeed. He is a rare beauty.

[namastenancy.livejournal.com]

How about Lymond and Phillipa? The development of Phillipa and their relationship was what kept me hooked on those novels. She was his equal and became even more so as the books progressed. I have a problem with a lot of literary couples because of the huge disparity in so many of the parings. It didn't bother me so much when I was younger and more romantic but now, there are few couples in novels that I can bear to read about without gritting my teeth.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

How about Lymond and Phillipa

Yes. I really should do my 'top ten' list. Philippa was a terrific character and she was good enough for Lymond - they're a great pair.

Some disparities I like, some I don't, it depends on the characters and the context. I hate it when the man is interesting and the woman isn't.

[namastenancy.livejournal.com]

That's very true - for instance, most of Dicken's couples are so very Victorian that they don't resonate today. All his "good" women are self-sacrificing and so sweet that it makes your teeth ache. But then, since most novels in the past were written by men, it stands to reason that their vision of a "perfect" couple is far different than that written by (most) women. I think that Jane Eyre and Rochester are my favorite Victorian couple although Planty Pall and the Duchess in the Palisier Novels comes a close second. They are completely mismatched and yet, in the end, have a very good marriage because he comes to love and value her for what she is, not as he (or his society) would have had her be.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I don't know: I find some of the ones created by female novelists utterly unbearable. I don't like Austen at all (the men are Regency furniture – elegantly carved but solid mahogany), and I hate Charlotte Brontë's "teacher-student" obsession (the Heger affair seems to colour every male-female relationship she writes, including Jane and Rochester). Perhaps it's an orientation thing: essentially, I find that straight women's ideal is not mine. There seems to be a fixation with "polar opposites attract", which – unless the narrative goal is tragic disharmony and dysfunction, in which case one roots for only one character – strikes me as a recipe for disaster. (Perhaps it's simply a dramatisation of heterosexuality taken to its most extreme.) If happiness is the goal, I don't see how conflicting temperaments can work. Surely likeness is better?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I think the point is usually (or often, I can't say whether it's the general rule) that opposite temperaments are complimentary, which makes for a tidy yin/yang balance. And are fun to read about because it adds to the tension.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

But you can't believe in them as lasting and durable relationships, which is what the 'happy ending' sort of demands. Tension and conflict can make for a brief passionate fling that ends in tears or violence (in which case, as reader, I will be on one side or the other, but know it could never have worked in the long-term, and berate the character I like for being so bloody stupid), but not for a long-term successful relationship. Yin/yang balance, masculine/feminine & c I see as things people have within themselves as individuals. I don't see it as about one person providing one, the other the opposite.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

But you can't believe in them as lasting and durable relationships

Why not? I've known couples in RL who seemed such, and were perfectly happy. I've also known couples who seemed very alike in temperament, and ended up fighting, or divorced. I don't think it works logically.

And tension and conflict are a matter of degrees, and usually, in novels, either a matter of circumstance and plot or misunderstanding. I have no problem with this.

Moreover I find it easy - even natural - to be on both sides at once.

Yin/yang balance, masculine/feminine & c I see as things people have within themselves as individuals. I don't see it as about one person providing one, the other the opposite.

So it is; but the relationship, the pair as a couple, makes a third entity with its own interior balances.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

...I might add that I share Charlotte Bronte's "teacher-student obsession" and it might be one of the many reasons I love her books so much.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I find it… not exactly full-on creepy, but immature and vaguely disturbing. It reminds me of girls I knew at university who used to target some of the younger staff because they were looking for some kind of validation (not just good marks!) from a male authority figure. The staff were generally too sensible to do anything that would have raised disciplinary problems.

I prefer something more egalitarian.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Ah, now, if I fell for a teacher it was always an older teacher - and I made sure no one ever knew.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

That's just too Oedipal for my tastes… Object of affections as parent-substitute.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was Oedipal, though I suppose I'd be the last to know. I just liked people I perceived as mature.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I just liked people I perceived as mature.

It's something I enjoy in friends – and I acknowledge that I tend to have quite a few older female friends to compensate for my flimsy relationship with my mother – but I would find it disturbing if sexualised. And with men – because I've never had any problems in my relationship with my father, I've never looked for a father-substitute in friendships with men.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yeah. We all perceive these things in our own way.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Yup. And from general observation of people who are drawn romantically to people considerably older than themselves, on a consistent basis, 2 alternative patterns tend to stand out: either they're trying to replicate an over-close relationship with the parent of that sex; or they're trying to compensate for a difficult relationship with a parent of that sex.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

most of Dicken's couples are so very Victorian that they don't resonate today

I find that Dickens women, the heroines at least, aren't very well written. They're a type - a little too sweet and virtuous for us now. How I growled at Lizzie Hexham for running from Eugene Wrayburn! And she's one of the better ones. His most successful women are the odd, older ones, people like Mme Dufarge and Mrs Podsnap. Therefore his romances are sort of... askew. On the whole. Though it isn't a romance, I'd say that the women in Great Expectations are perhaps his best.

I adore Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Lymond and Philippa are truly great, and this exercise has me trying to work out who my top ten favourite romantic couples in fiction would be. So far - I can't do it. Still working on it.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I must also add Geruthe/Gertrude and Feng/Claudius in John Updike's Gertrude & Claudius. They're adorable. She's cuddly, and he even quotes Bertran de Born.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

he even quotes Bertran de Born.

Wonderful! I'll put it on my TBR pile.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

As a dashing adventurer who has fought his way across Europe (Southern France, Italy, Aragon, Byzantium), and quotes trobar, Updike's Claudius puts me in mind of the historical Rognvald Kali (the Jarl of Orkney who wrote trobar-influenced poems about Ermengarda of Narbonne), and a little of our own dear Conrad.

Gertrude is lovely, warm-hearted but trapped, and is the sort of person who'd be great to have as a friend.

It's also nice to find good quality fanfic (which is what it it!) that centres on a passionate relationship between two emotionally experienced, middle-aged people.

Have you got a copy of it?