Writing a romance should be easy. You take a man and a woman, throw in a few complications, shake it about a bit et voila! Only I don't think it works like that.
I've read books that have made me swoon. I've read a fair few more that have led me to consider lobbying for book-throwing to be considered an Olympic sport. In almost every case, the problem was the same. The protagonists were annoying. In the far off days when I made a point of finishing every book I started, Wuthering Heights nearly brought on apoplexy. Now I recognise that it is regarded as a classic, but Cathy and Heathcliffe irritated me beyond endurance (I was nineteen at the time, an age when I would have expected star-crossed lovers to appeal). On the other hand, I've rooted all the way through an Alistair MacLean thriller for the hero to get the girl and had my heartstrings well and truly yanked when she didn't make it to the final page in one piece.
So is it just a matter of taste in the reader or is there something more to it? What makes one pairing iconic and another moronic?
Anybody want to share their favourite couples here?
Wuthering Heights doesn't do it for me at all. Heathcliffe is just so unpleasant. Actually they all are. Nor Mr Rochester, with his poor wife in the attic with a drunk menial in charge.
ReplyDeleteI like Beatrice and Benedict, Emma and Mr Knightley. Wit and humour carry the day. No one with any sense of humour could go in for all that 50 Shades nonsense (not that I've even read the sample, but I'm betting there aren't many jokes in that novel).
A man who makes you laugh is very attractive, regardless of appearance.
Quite agree. Kind and funny are always a good bet (although I seem to attract funny-peculiar men rather than funny-ha-ha.
ReplyDeleteRochester's actions are a little ambiguous. Bronte has him present sticking Bertha in the attic as an act of humanity. In Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White [SPOILER] Glyde sticks someone in an asylum and is presented as an out and out villain for doing so. It's years since I've read it and I'm fairly sure he had nefarious reasons, but even so, in comparison Rochester was a model of charity. I should confess at this point that I saw a DVD of the 1973 BBC version of Jane Eyre at an impressionable age (twenty-nine) and developed a thumping great crush on Michael Jayston, so I'm not altogether unbiased regarding Rochester.
I'm not a great fan of Darcy, come to think of it. Never quite convinced by his change of character.