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

[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.