relationships

When the Good and the Bad Get Ugly

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Sometimes opposites attract — for a little while, at least — and this is true in literature as well as real life. Today, I’m going to discuss relationships between “bad boys” and admirable women, and between not-so-admirable women and decent men.

Both variations can make for interesting reading. Is it just physical attraction? Are these people masochists? Does their very incompatibility make things (temporarily) exciting? Do those couples have ANYTHING in common? Will the relationship be fairly brief, before too much psychological (and/or physical) damage happens? Or will things go on for far too long? Was the liaison seemingly positive at first before one person started acting badly?

The idea for this post was suggested by “elisabethm,” who writes the excellent literature blog “A Russian Affair.” A recent post of hers mentioned “bad guy” Dolokhov and his marriage proposal to “good girl” Sonya in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

While on the subject of Russian literature, there is of course kind/moral Sonya and tortured soul Raskolnikov, a murderer with some redeeming qualities in Crime and Punishment. The conclusion of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel is basically all about the positive impact Sonya has on Raskolnikov.

Other examples of good women who spent some time with not-good men include the wonderful Dorothea Brooke, who’s married to pompous/ineffectual/cold-fish scholar Edward Casaubon in George Eliot’s Middlemarch; the admirable Helen and her alcoholic husband Arthur of Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, in which Helen bravely leaves her abusive spouse; the hardworking Gervaise and her starts-off-decent-but-grows-mean-and-lazy-after-getting-injured husband Coupeau of Emile Zola’s The Drinking Den; the independent-minded-but-deferential (for a while) Orleanna Price and her rotten-to-the-core missionary husband Nathan of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible; the clairvoyant Clara and the nasty but somewhat redeemable right-winger Esteban in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits; Celeste and her violent rich banker husband Perry in Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies; and Ruth and her abusive spouse Frank in Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Then there are novels in which good guys find themselves in relationships with problematic women. Those include, among others, W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, in which the talented but lacking-in-confidence Philip Carey falls hard for the nasty, not-so-smart Mildred Rogers; and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, in which the unlikable Gauri leaves her likable husband Subhash and also abandons her daughter Bela — who Subhash conscientiously raises.

A couple of notes: Obviously, many of the above characters are not all bad or all good. And there can of course be the bad-good dynamic in same-gender relationships, but this blog post is about female-male relationships.

What are your favorite works that fit this column’s topic?

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — which mixes my recent trip to France with local news — is here.

A Post About Post-Relationship Life in Literature

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Adjusting to life soon after divorce, widowhood, or the end of a non-marital romantic relationship often isn’t easy — even if the partnership was negative.

But reading about the emotionally wrenched lives of fictional characters after they break up? Well, that’s sort of like watching a horror movie relatively calmly rather than being a scared horror victim in real life. There’s enough of a remove to feel interest, fascination, and, heck, even a sense of entertainment — minus the personal angst.

Yet while reading about fictional breakups, we probably do think about our own breakups — which helps us also feel empathy for now-solo protagonists in literature. (I was divorced myself.) And those characters’ experiences can be so dramatic and curiosity-evoking. How are they coping? Will they get their lives together again? Meet someone new? If kids are involved, how are they handling things?

Of course a novel I just read made me think of this topic. It was Elizabeth Berg’s Open House, a 2000 book that starts with Samantha Morrow’s husband leaving her. Samantha struggles to keep it together emotionally, while also dealing with a sullen son made more sullen by the impending divorce. She also struggles enough financially to have to take in boarders: a nice elderly woman with a great romantic life, then a depressed young woman, and then an upbeat young gay man. Meanwhile, Samantha becomes friends with an almost-too-good-to-be-true guy, yet doesn’t see him as a potential romantic partner until…

Anne Lamott’s Blue Shoe (2002) has a somewhat similar story line as it focuses on protagonist Mattie Ryder after her marriage fails.

Then there’s Fay Weldon’s The Bulgari Connection, in which Grace McNab Salt’s dishonorable husband leaves her for the much younger, more glamorous Doris Dubois. Grace first reacts badly (she tries to run over Doris) and then more maturely (I’ll avoid spoilers here). But suffice to say that Weldon’s 2001 novel, like Open House and Blue Shoe, has inspiring and empowering moments for its female stars.

The three above books were published 2000, 2001, and 2002? What was it about novels that came out soon after the millennium turned? 🙂

Other recent or relatively recent novels with compelling post-end-of-relationship scenarios in the main plot or subplot include Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Ruth leaves her abusive husband), Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland (Subhash deals with life after his wife departs), Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story (adultery in the days of apartheid), Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (Dellarobia chooses independence over a lackluster marriage), and Terry McMillan’s How Stella Got Her Groove Back (a divorced mother finds love on vacation).

Latter-20th-century and early-21st-century novels by male authors also deal interestingly with this subject matter. For instance, there’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera (widow decides whether to reunite with a man she was involved with five decades earlier), Jack Finney’s Time and Again (time-traveling Simon Morley finds a better relationship in the past than in the present), David Baldacci’s One Summer (about a father’s experiences after his wife’s death), Stephen King’s Rose Madder (about a woman who flees an abusive husband — and gets involved with some supernatural stuff), and John Grisham’s The Client (the book’s back story has Regina “Reggie” Love becoming a compassionate lawyer after a terrible marriage).

Then there are classic novels with plots or subplots dealing with life after marriages or relationships end — including George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Colette’s The Vagabond, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, and the Bronte sisters’ tremendous trifecta of Jane Eyre (Charlotte), Wuthering Heights (Emily), and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne).

What are your favorite novels with the kinds of scenarios discussed here?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Mismatches Aren’t Always ‘Mismatchy’

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In Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, married couple Shadow and Laura spend time together. Which is not surprising, except for the fact that she’s…dead.

Yup, relationships in literature can sometimes be strange, offbeat, unusual, unexpected, or improbable — making it seem, in comparison, like Felix and Oscar were kindred spirits in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. But drama or humor can abound when there’s interaction between people with very different situations, personalities, and demographics.

Most examples I’m about to give are nowhere near as extreme as Laura and Shadow’s “till death doesn’t do us part” union. But the relationships I’ll mention are still of the rather unlikely sort — albeit often positive.

For instance, there’s Queequeg and Ishmael in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. A masterful black harpoonist and a fairly ordinary white seaman — raised thousands of miles apart in dissimilar cultures — who become pals after their quirky first meeting at a New England inn.

Or take the friendship that develops between elderly nursing-home resident Ninny Threadgoode and middle-aged visitor Evelyn Couch, who are not related and originally didn’t know each other in Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Ninny and the stories she tells turn out to be life-changing for Evelyn.

Flagg’s novel partly looks back to distant decades, while Camille is set a short time after the death of Marguerite Gautier (“The Lady of the Camellias”). In Alexandre Dumas fils’ novel, an unnamed narrator and Marguerite’s former lover Armand Duval meet/interact in a non-ordinary way as the story of the late Gautier unfolds.

Another “diva” of sorts is opera singer Roxane Coss of Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto. When Roxane is among a group of people taken hostage for months, she has an affair with opera-loving, married businessman Katsumi Hosokawa — a pairing that could only happen in such an artificial situation.

Or how about the relationship in Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son? Beleaguered but resourceful protagonist Pak Jun Do ends up audaciously appearing at the doorstep of a famous North Korean actress (Sun-moon) to replace her military husband (Commander Ga).

Fictional relationships rarely get as unpredictable as that of married couple Henry and Clare in Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. Henry bounces around in time, always staying an adult as he randomly encounters Clare when she’s a kid and when she’s a grown-up.

Back in the friendship realm, an against-the-odds bond develops between Kiki and Carlene in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty — unusual not because those two women are from different countries (the U.S. and England) but because their less-than-ethical husbands (one a white liberal and the other a black conservative) are bitter rivals in academia.

Then there are unusual work pairings, some of which can almost be friendships as well. For instance, in Charles Portis’ True Grit, Mattie Ross hires Rooster Cogburn to find her father’s murderer, and those totally opposite characters (female/male, young/older, straitlaced/dissolute, etc.) end up feeling a fondness and respect for each other.

Jeeves and Bertie Wooster are also friends in a way — even though Jeeves is the (much smarter) butler and Bertie is his employer in P.G. Wodehouse’s novels and short stories.

Humphrey van Weyden and Wolf Larsen are far from buddies in Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf, but their relationship is fascinating as it evolves. The physically weak Humphrey is rescued from the water, and forced to stay and work on the boat captained by the strong, bullying Larsen…until the tables start to turn.

Some other seemingly mismatched relationships: English captain John Blackthorne and Japanese translator Mariko, who become lovers in James Clavell’s Shogun; lower-class white kid Huck and escaped black slave Jim, who develop a friendship in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; “deformed,” goodhearted Quasimodo and beautiful, compassionate Gypsy dancer Esmeralda in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame; and Nino and Giuseppe, half-brothers many years apart in age who share an affectionate but sporadic bond (Nino is not very responsible) in Elsa Morante’s History.

Also: white woodsman Natty Bumppo and the Native American Chingachgook, close friends in James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking” novels at a time when most settlers treated Native Americans horribly; brilliant, young, computer-hacking “punk” Lisbeth Salander and brilliant, middle-aged, somewhat-more-conventional journalist Mikhail Blomkvist, who have a complex relationship in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc.); and Dorothy, The Scarecrow, The Tin Man, and The Cowardly Lion in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Also: mismatched college roommates Walter Berglund (a friendly “nerd”) and Richard Katz (abrasive indie rocker) in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom; Professor Virgina Miner and non-intellectual Chuck Mumpson, who become attracted to each other in Alison Lurie’s Foreign Affairs; writer Paul Sheldon and his psychopathic fan, Annie Wilkes, who torments Sheldon in Stephen King’s Misery; religious, dying teen loner Jamie and popular, rebellious teen Landon, who have a poignant relationship in Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember; and Jackie Kapp, a jeweler from an immigrant family who gets to know famous New York Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson in Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s The Celebrant.

When it comes to far-fetched relationships, animals can be involved, too. For instance, there’s Pi and Richard Parker the tiger, thrust uneasily together after a shipwreck in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi; lonely lower-class farmer Link Ferris and high-class collie Chum in Albert Payson Terhune’s His Dog; and Mrs. Murphy the cat and Tee Tucker the dog, pals who talk to each other in Rita Mae Brown’s mysteries.

What are some of the most unusual relationships, friendships, and other pairings in literature?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

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For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

I’m also writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Living Together Without the Romance

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When one thinks of adults residing in the same household, the first people that come to mind are couples who are married or living together.

But there are other grown-up groupings: parents with adult children at home, parents with their parents in spare rooms, siblings sharing an abode, people taking care of ill relatives, unrelated adults renting an apartment together, servants or nannies residing on the premises, refugees clumped together during a war, and so on. Those kinds of household arrangements in literature are the subject of this blog post.

Why those arrangements? They’re done for reasons such as economics, love, neurosis, or tradition (for instance, in “the olden days” adult women often stayed home until they married). In real life, the situations of adults non-romantically living together can often be mundane; in the heightened world of literature, those arrangements are frequently depicted in more dramatic fashion.

Take Washington Square. In Henry James’ novel, things get rather interesting as rich, unkind Dr. Austin Sloper opposes his at-home daughter Catherine’s relationship with the not-very-solvent Morris Townsend because he suspects the charismatic Morris wants to marry the uncharismatic Catherine for her inheritance. (There’s a reason why the movie version of the book is called The Heiress.) Meanwhile, Dr. Sloper’s also-at-home sister Lavinia Penniman supports the possible marriage in her meddlesome, irritating way because she finds the whole scenario vicariously exciting.

James’ pal Edith Wharton offers another niece-aunt dynamic in The House of Mirth, which features the not-wealthy Lily Bart uneasily living with her wealthy but ungenerous Aunt Julia. When the aunt dies, Lily’s financial problems are seemingly over — until she learns that Julia mostly wrote her out of her will because of an alleged “scandal” for which Lily is not really to blame.

Adult daughters living with widowed fathers are memorably depicted in Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Emma. Anne Elliot is a together person from the start of Persuasion, with an unlikable dad. Emma Woodhouse grows as a person in Emma, with a likable but hypochondriacal dad.

Also in 19th-century Brit lit, George Eliot’s dramatic Daniel Deronda features various non-romantic living arrangements. After Daniel saves her, Mirah Lapidoth lives with the family of Daniel’s friend from school days. Meanwhile, Mirah’s brother Mordecai lives with a different family. Later, after Mirah and Mordecai find each other following years of separation, they share a household as siblings.

The Bronte sisters are part of this discussion, too. The title character in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre becomes the governess to Edward Rochester’s “ward” Adele at Thornfield Hall. (Though that situation eventually turns into a romance.) In Emily’s Wuthering Heights, servant Nelly Dean is the crucial narrator who lives with a number of the novel’s tempestuous and/or sickly adult characters.

Moving to 20th-century fiction, we have siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert sharing a residence when they seek to adopt a boy to help on their farm. Instead, they end up with the delightful Anne Shirley in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has the mysterious Radley family, including mentally challenged adult son Boo, in the same house. Then there’s the impoverished Ewell family dwelling — where the adult Mayella lives with her siblings and drunk, abusive father Bob. Boo and Bob “meet” during the novel’s famous conclusion.

In Elsa Morante’s History, Ida and her lovable son Giuseppe have to live in a shelter with many other adults and kids because of the ravages of war in 1940s Rome.

Cost-conscious college students and young adults sharing the same room or apartment appear in numerous fictional works, including Margaret Atwood’s debut novel The Edible Woman. Protagonist Marian shares a Toronto apartment with Ainsley — and the depiction of their interesting, at-times funny friendship is an early example of Atwood’s novel-writing skill.

What are your favorite literary works featuring adults (other than spouses/romantic partners) living together?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else. Also, please feel free to read through comments and reply to anyone you want; I love not only being in conversations, but also reading conversations in which I’m not involved!)

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For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

I’m also writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in New York City and Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Big Gap in Ages on Many Pages

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It’s December, so writing a blog post about literature’s May-December romances seems appropriate. But please don’t wait until May to read this!

Relationships between people who are 15, 30, or even 50 years apart in age crop up a number of times in fiction, as they do in real life. Men are often the older party in our sexist society, but sometimes the roles are reversed.

I personally prefer couples to be roughly the same age (my wife and I are three years apart). They’re more likely to have similar maturity levels, and share cultural and sociopolitical touchstones. Plus there’s a better chance that the ravages of age will take their toll at roughly the same time. It’s more fun acting out The Three Musketeers if you both have canes to use as swords!

But literature’s May-December couples (or May-August couples) can certainly be compelling from a dramatic standpoint. Will a relationship with a large age gap last? Does the different chronological prism of each lover make for a relationship that’s less compatible or more interesting? Does the younger person want financial security? A mentor? A surrogate “parent”? Does the older person want sex? To relive his or her youth? Have power over another? Have someone to take care of them in old age? If the older person is male, does he want another biological child or his first biological child? What do the couples’ parents and friends think of the wide life-span range? Questions, questions. Answers will be provided next May (just kidding).

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the stellar Stieg Larsson novel I also mentioned last week, has a “twofer” in this area: 42-year-old Mikael Blomkvist sleeps a number of times with a woman who’s 56 before doing the same with one who’s 24. The women — I’m omitting their names to avoid spoilers — initiate the “affairs” in each case. (Does the dragon on that tattoo also have a May-December relationship? I’ll check The New York Times‘ “Vows” column and get back to you.)

But as I mentioned earlier, men are older in the majority of age-mismatched couples. For instance, Jane Eyre is 18 and Edward Rochester in his latter 30s when the two meet. But Jane’s hard-won, exceptional maturity makes that gap seem significantly less in Charlotte Bronte’s novel.

Another Edward, the Rev. Casaubon, is also much older than his wife in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Dorothea Brooke is a smart woman who eventually becomes as clear-eyed about life as Jane Eyre is, but her combination of idealism and youthful naivete when meeting Edward cause her to misread what Casaubon is really like (awful).

Also negatively matched are Isabel Archer and her two-decades-older husband in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady. There are other reasons besides age for why that marriage doesn’t work, but it’s germane that the husband has lived long enough to have a secret history plus lots of “practice” being controlling and manipulative.

Another reverend wed to a much younger woman is John Ames in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, but the match is a fairly positive one despite his ill health. The marriage gave John (whose first wife died giving birth to a daughter who also died) two second chances because he also has a young son with Lila.

Then there are very queasy age gaps, such as the one in Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial Lolita between the 12-year-old title character and Humbert Humbert — who’s in his late 30s when the pair’s sexual involvement happens.

There are also unreal gaps, as with Cormac O’Connor being roughly 275 years old when in a serious relationship with a normal-aged women near the end of Pete Hamill’s Forever. Cormac can live indefinitely (and still look young) as long as he doesn’t leave Manhattan — meaning gentrification is an obvious threat. 🙂

As I said earlier, older woman-younger man couples are not seen as frequently, but they do exist in literature as well as real life.

Terry McMillan’s How Stella Got Her Groove Back tells the story of a forty-something stockbroker and single mother who, while on an island vacation, falls for a man half her age.

Mario Vargas Llosa’s semi-autobiographical Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter features an 18-year-old named Mario falling in love with 32-year-old divorcee Julia. She is indeed his aunt, but they’re not related by blood.

Colette’s Cheri focuses on the affair between the novel’s title character and Lea, who’s 24 years older than him. The author herself had a (bad) first marriage to a man 14 years her senior and a (good) third marriage to a man 16 years her junior.

Harold and Maude, featuring a relationship between a young man and 79-year-old woman, is best known as a cult-favorite movie but was also turned into a novel by Colin Higgins.

And there’s a sweet section of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine novel in which a young man and a woman over 90 have a series of deep conversations that are essentially a verbal love affair.

Who are some of the most memorable fictional couples (married or not) with wide age gaps? (Straight or gay relationships welcome!)

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else. Also, please feel free to read through comments and reply to anyone you want; I love not only being in conversations, but also reading conversations in which I’m not involved!)

—

For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

I’m also writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in New York City and Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.