inklingfair that Pride and Prejudice will always be my standard of comparison for all stories making use of the girl-can’t-stand-boy (or girl)/unresolved tension trope (sexual or otherwise, any tension or imbalance will do, which is why I will always be a Jo March/Laurie shipper, bah Professor Bhaer).
It just dawned on me today that love stories in fiction are classified as such because we expect them to be – the blurb on the dust jacket says so, the cover art shows a couple eyeing each other longingly (racier ones will have the heroine’s bodice half ripped off and the hero flexing manly biceps/square jaws), the reviewers swoon and sigh, et cetera. Real life love stories are a bit more muddled up, dragging at some parts, and neither party has a clue about when things are going to resolve nicely, with cake and dancing (or *dancing*, as any hot-blooded 900-year-old Gallifreyan should have done in nine centuries).
So, real life. “No lace, Mrs. Bennet, I beg you.” In real life, Bingley has more faults than just being too nice. Wickham is heartbroken over Georgiana. Jane has a biting fetish. Darcy is unfaithful to Lizzie ten years into the marriage. And so on. But what redeems the whole crazy carousel is the beauty of the mess, the change wrought in the unlikeliest of people.
Stories – I think I can survive just reading the stories. But living one – well, we shall see what we shall see.
Photo by Elaine Howlin on Unsplash
