A Love Letter to a Love Letter

Jeff and I unboxed books for a book sale this past week. We were assigned the paperback romance novels which was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Some of the titles were pretty cringe worthy (The Greek Billionaire's Forced Bride). We were discussing good romance novels at knitting last night (think Gone With the Wind and Pride and Prejudice) and discussing if we had ever swooned at a book.

So this morning I'm thinking about swooning moments. Moments that are just so romantic and wonderful that they capture your emotions. And I thought of one. One of the few times where I've actually swooned at a book. It's from Jane Austen's Persuasion. Persuasion was the last book that Austen wrote, and her most sad. It's about unrequited love, something I have some good experience with. And it's my favorite of her novels. At the end of the book there is a love letter that made me weak in the knees when I read it. It's a love letter filled with passion and hope and a bit of pain. It's some of the best romantic writing I've ever read. So I thought I would quote it here. Sorry for the spoiler. If I destroy the book for you, I apologize. Although it is still well worth reading, just for Austen's wonderful phrasings.

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.
"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."

I Like for Things to be Story-Shaped

This fantastic first line comes from "The Flints of Memory Lane", a short story in Neil Gaiman's book Fragile Things. I get a chill listening to it on audio book. It's a line that rings true for me. I do like things to be story shaped. I like the way books make things so much clearer. There is character and plot and progress. But as Gaiman is quick to point out, reality is very rarely story shaped. Perhaps that is why I read so much. Perhaps that is why I tell stories.

I don't remember when I started telling myself stories. I don't remember anything before five so I'll say then. I know I was in middle school when the thought occurred to me that I should write them down. Sadly that only happens some of the time. But the stories keep coming. In the car I sit at stoplights and talk to myself. At home while folding laundry I create dialogue between characters. I move plots forward at breakneck speeds. All in my head. I've been doing this since I was young. It's not going away anytime soon.

I couldn't sleep last night. It was way too hot for sleep (over 80 all night). And as I lay there in bed I thought about my stories and my non-existent writing and I wondered where the disconnect was. I could have written dozens of novels with the stories I've created. I could have already been published. But I rarely write them down and I thought about why that's the case. And I came to a startling conclusion. I'm ashamed of my stories. I have been for years. For a while I would try to force myself to stop. Tell myself that if I stopped telling these silly stories then I could write those great works of fiction that I knew I had in me. Or I could write those wonderful children's stories that would make children happy. Or I could write anything worthwhile. Instead what I tell myself are silly romance stories, or relationship dramas. I created characters who went about their normal lives and had normal dreams. And those stories have never seemed worthwhile to me. Always more like fluff than good fiction. But I think I'm going to try an experiment. I'm going to try writing the stories that are inside me. Stop waiting for those great works of literature to come and just write my silly little tales and see what happens. See where it goes. "I like for things to be story-shaped". Let's see where that goes.

Wuthering Heights

I'm not sure how I escaped from college with an English degree without reading any of the Bronte sisters. I did an entire semester on Jane Austen but never cracked a single book by either Emily, Charlotte, or Anne. About a year ago I remedied that by picking up Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I loved the book but remember thinking that it wasn't what I was expecting. Apparently all the sisters have that in common.

I've heard tons about Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's immortal novel. It has been described as one of the most romantic books ever written. It has been described as passionate and powerful. Many say that the love story between Catherine and Heathcliff is one of the most obsessive and powerful they'd ever read. Just today I saw it listed by two different writers, as they're favorite romantic book. So I was expecting a romance. When I finally read the book last week I found something completely different.

I didn't consider Wuthering Heights a romance. Yes, there is a romance between Catherine and Heathcliff. But that takes up only the first quarter of the book. It is what happens after that seemed to me the focus of the story. Instead this is a book about a tragic family. It is a book about revenge. It is a book about a villain. Far from romantic, I found Heathcliff to be horrible. The man was a villain of the first degree. After Catherine's meladramatic and mostly foolish death, he falls apart and begins to take systematic revenge upon everyone who'd ever come in contact with her. He starts with her sister-in-law, then her husband (yes Catherine marries someone else), then her brother. Eventually he moves on to his own son, Catherine's daughter, and any other person who may once have been involved in the family.

Now don't get me wrong, Heathcliff is not a killer. Instead, his villany is far more creative. He simply plots and schemes to take everything from them. He manages to steal away everything from Catherine's brother (who also happens to be his. It's complicated). He takes revenge on Catherine's husband by forcing their daughter to marry his son against her wishes, thereby giving all of their estate to him. After Catherine's death it is simply one heineous deed after another as he takes his revenge on everyone around him. The interesting thing about this whole book is that I never manage to see the connection between him and Catherine. They claim, at separate times, to be in love with each other but I, as reader, didn't really ever see it. They stood up for each other in childhood, they adventured together as adolescents. And then later, after Catherine is married, do they finally state that they love each other. But both Catherine and Heathcliff are such dispicable characters that by that point I didn't really care.

You would think that after all this talk that I hated the book, which is not true. I devoured the book. Not one of the characters is likable. I found myself constantly yelling at the characters that they were acting like idiots. I was shocked by the pure malice in the book. And I was still surprised that this was not a romance. But through all of this, the story of this family is so sad, so tortured that I had to continue. Each character was flawed but distinct. This book, told by the former housekeeper, is delicious gossip. We get to know the characters from the vantage point of looking in. We see their struggles but from the detached observer standpoint. And like a train wreck it was tough to look away. Tolstoy famously started Anna Karenina with this line. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Wuthering Heights is the story of an unhappy family and the tragedies that befall them. Tragic, powerful, and beautiful, this book is everything but romantic.