Defending the Indefensible Relationship: Austen's Mrs. Clay and Mr. Elliot; Richardson's Mr. B and Pamela

On Votaries, I discuss unliked characters who end up with their own books. 

Unliked relationships are a little less likely to be defended. P.D. James did defend Withers in her Death at Pemberley but not because his relationship with Lydia had substantially altered. 

I defend two classic relationships, one negative in the original text; one negative according to later critics.

In Persuadable, Mrs. Clay pursues and married Mr. Elliot. I basically make them low-key grifters who recognize each other's nature. They are attracted to each other, mostly because the people around them are so comparatively boring. 

Interestingly enough, although Jane Austen quite often ruthlessly goes after opportunists, she lets Mrs. Clay do whatever Mrs. Clay does. There's an entirely unspoken acknowledgement that women who marry for money or position or protection are, in fact, saving their skins. She treats Charlotte from Pride & Prejudice coldly but with understanding. 

The second relationship is Mr. B and Pamela in Mr. B Speaks! When Samuel Richardson's book was published, this couple was...think Brad & Jennifer, Taylor & Burton, the Twilight stuff. HUGE. Real churches rang real bells in celebration of the marriage. Sure, Henry Fielding mocked Pamela with Shamela, but most people were totally on-board. Mr. B and Pamelay WERE the eighteenth century's favorite couple.

Now-a-days, we look askance. Mr. B appears to stalk Pamela; he kidnaps her, harasses her, nearly (but doesn't) rape her, plans to fool her with a fake clergyman, and then, finally, marries her. 

However, I think that Richardson is a great example of a guy who thought he was writing one book but got too interested in something else. He gets too interested in the debate/repartee between Mr. B and Pamela. 

Those conversations, when shorn of their eighteenth century verbiage, strike me as something one hears on The Thin Man. 

So I set out to explain and justify that relationship. 

(Persuadable & Mr. B Speaks! will be republished by Aurora & Bob Press in 2025.)

Importance of Religion to a Successful Marriage

On Votaries today, I wrote about dissenters and atheists. 

The question here is: How important is religion to a marriage?

The question can be split into at least two parts:

• How many marriages these days are interfaith (intermarriages) versus a single faith (intramarriages)? 
• Does interfaith versus intrafaith make any difference?

According to the Pew Research Center, most people marry people of the same faith. The number of interfaith households has increased--but honestly not as much as I anticipated. 

Some religions do encourage same faith marriages. And many people place agreement over religion above agreement over other things, like politics. 

However, it is also quite likely that people end up marrying within the same faith because those are the people they know. As Patrice Heller and Beatrice Wood point out in "The Influence of Religious and Ethnic Differences on Marital Intimacy: Intermarriage versus Intramarriage," "[S]alient categorical homogeneity--that is, when a couple shares the same meaningful religious and ethnic group affiliations--usually deepens attractiveness of a potential marital relationship" (242).  

In other words, we are all incredible self-centered and want to be with people who remind us of us--or, to be less cynical, with people with whom we are comfortable. 

However, interfaith marriages are not therefore automatically less intimate (intimate being defined here as closeness within the marriage). While intramarriage couples share a common "language," the significant others also run the risk of making assumptions about each other when they "project similarity and agreement about a host of issues." On the other hand, while intrafaith couples may lack a similar "frame of reference for negotiating differences," they do negotiate more and carry out "self-disclosure" (242-243). 

In other words, the marriage's success is all about the couple. 

The article (full reference below) does a decent job of addressing the underlying issue: namely, people who participate in studies are...people who participate in studies. An intramarried couple who participated in this study (I would suggest) would already be fairly confident that religion binds them together while an interfaith couple who participated in this study would already be fairly confident that their differences don't preclude agreement in other ways and can be handled through discussion.

After all, that's what the researchers discovered!

Even more interesting, however, was that the researchers found that education (class) wasn't necessarily the fall-back "similarity" either. At the end of the article, they suggest more research is needed. 

I always appreciate non-self-help-book research that explore issues that are taken for granted.  

Heller, Patrice and Beatrice Wood. "The Influence of Religious and Ethnic Differences on Marital Intimacy: Intermarriage versus Intramarriage." Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, vol. 26, no. 2. April 2000, 241-252. 

The Fun and Fallible Female Love Interest

In Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, Taran falls in love with the sharp-tempered, adorable, outspoken and somewhat out-of-her-depth (at least initially) heroine.

In general, manga and anime do this character type better than Hollywood. With Hollywood, the "I'm too independent for you" aspect begins to wear thin. Even Eilonwy, Taran's love interest, grates some. She is funny with a few great lines. But she always seems to be right, even when she truly shouldn't be (gatecrashing a military action), and she is regularly dismissive of Taran, even if she does it defensively. (I don't remember my reaction to the character when I was younger; I was more enthralled by Taran and by Gwydion than by Eilonwy. I do remember that I liked her in the third book the best.)

In comparison, manga and anime present this same character as hapless AND effective at the same time. Check out Kasahara from Library Wars, who is somewhat spastic and committed to her career and brave and rather innocent.

And then there's Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle: tough and whimsical and unsure and efficient and passionate. Wry and adorable and real all at the same time. (And it occurs to me that Miyazaki would have done a beautiful job with Alexander's series. Perhaps his studio still could.)

Anne of Green Gables, of course, is the Western answer--in both the books and Sullivan's first series. And Anne is wonderful. But she is difficult to replicate. Off the top of my head, one exception I thought of is Amanda Bynes in the Shakespeare-inspired She's the Man. She is a decent comedian and willing to do physical comedy where she falls over her own feet. 

Another exception, surprisingly enough, is Ziva of NCIS who has a somewhat similar--if much more inherently violent--personality to the anime/manga female characters. She also has a notable internal arc).

That sense of whimsy makes all the difference. And a great actress. And having a storyteller--Bellisario--at the initial helm.

Everybody in Romance Needs a Job: Twilight Out of Focus

Twilight Out of Focus is an impressive series precisely because the actual jobs make a difference.

The series revolves around the senior and junior units of a high school film club. The jobs range from camera man to scriptwriter to director to actor to gofer. 

Nearly every volume tackles a particular production. The production isn't simply the container. Like with Semantic Error, the project is directly linked to the lovers' characters. 

One character wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life. When he gets roped into one of the club's productions, his ability to act leads him to join the drama club. 

A scriptwriter/director argues with his lover over the purpose of a film. Giichi perceives a film in artistic terms. His lover sees it more as a team project, a way to bring people together. And yet they both love film and work very hard on their projects.

The gofer or production assistant or runner is on the set to get a boyfriend. However, he works hard. The film club fits his style since he has the ability to quickly master tasks and subsequently got bored in other clubs. With the film club, he stays long enough to invest himself and build relationships.

Love of the trade seeps through the volumes--it matters what the characters do, to the readers and to the writer.   

What is Tauriel Heading Towards? Beorn, Possibly--or Bard

I mention on Votaries that Jackson really needed to pay off Tauriel in The Hobbit trilogy. The issue isn't about romance. It's about storytelling. 

Set something up--pay something off.

I suggested a few pay-offs (I took keeping Kili alive off the table, though that was certainly a possible pay-off!):

• She goes to Moria with Balin to honor Kili's memory. 
• She takes Kili's stone back to his mum. 
• She carries Kili's stone with her to the Undying Lands.
• She marries Beorn. 
• She marries Bard since they have both lost someone and she gets along with his kids. She becomes the de facto queen of Dale.

I go back and forth between Tauriel marrying Bard (hey, she's a great role model for his kids!) and Tauriel marrying Beorn, the latter in large part because the novels never mention where all his Beornings come from. 

The Beornings are mentioned quite often in The Lord of the Rings novels. They are either a group that gathered around Beorn or they are his descendants. They are largely responsible for keeping passes open between East Middle Earth and West Middle Earth. Bilbo's ability (in the books) to visit the Lonely Mountain before he settles in Rivendell is due to the Beornings. 

And yet, in The Hobbit, the book, Beorn's wife is unmentioned. In Jackson's movies, she is dead.

Why not Tauriel as the co-founder of a dynasty? She's fierce!

And she's looking for something. As John Howe states about Kili and Tauriel:

 

The relationship between Tauriel and Kili is like one of those love stories where people think they are falling in love when, in fact, they are actually falling out of love with everything else around them, and the only sympathetic face is someone who they would never choose in any other circumstances...

 

Thranduil's sudden about-face at the end of the trilogy--his statement to Tauriel, "[It hurts so much] because it was real"--is not only not enough of a pay-off, it utterly misses the point. 

Tauriel and Kili's relationship was never about whether they REALLY loved each other or, for that matter, about family support. It was about the answers they found in each other that were lacking in their own cultures. "Love" was about what the other person had to offer (in a positive sense, not in a "you have to make up for my deficiencies" sense). 

Tauriel is looking for a purpose. "I'm going to save him" is an epiphany moment for her, a realization that she can expand beyond her slated role. 

I think Beorn is about as outside what she is used to as a person can get. He is powerful in his own right. An protector of the human dwellers in his area. A wilderness supporter (give the guy a state park!). A wise man. Fair in his dealings. A shapeshifter. A man with a yearning for family. 

I think Tauriel would find a home and a purpose with him. 

She could also help keep Sauron's forces at bay alongside Bard's grandson in The Lord of the Rings. 

Lots of possibilities!

 

Classic Romance Trope: Bring the Unsuitable Suitor Home

Is she his sister? Really?

Agatha Christie's "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" includes a classic romance trope--bring the unsuitable suitors home and the son/daughter will realize how unsuitable they really are. 

Frasier, in fact, used this trope with one of Frasier's last girlfriends. She is SO awful (rude, dismissive, inattentive to others' news), Frasier realizes what a mistake he has made. 

However, the approach only works if the son/daughter isn't (1) smitten; (2) looking for a way to tell off the family; (3) thrown into the unsuitable suitor's arms because the family is worse. 

In Clouds of Witnesses, Dorothy Sayers includes dialog between Mary and Mary and Peter's mother. Before the War (World War I), Mary was dating George Goyles, a Communist agitator, who turns out to be so entirely self-involved, he leaves Mary to face a corpse on her own. Mary is eventually disillusioned by him. But not until she actually thinks he didn't care about her getting murdered. 

My image of Peter's mother.

Early on, George Goyles invited himself to the house to meet the family. Mary's mother, the Dowager Duchess, reports the event:

"He invited himself down one weekend when the house was very full, and he seemed to make a point of consulting nobody's convenience but his own. And you know, dear [to Mary], you even said yourself you thought he was unnecessarily rude to poor old Lord Mountweazle."

"[George] said what he thought," said Mary. "The present generation does."

"But all I remember saying to Peter was that Mr. Goyle's manners seemed to me to lack polish and that he showed a lack of independence in his opinions."

"Perhaps you didn't say much about him, mother, but Gerald said lots--dreadful things!"

"Yes, he said what he thought. The present generation does, you know. To the uninitiated, I admit, it does sound a little rude."

Despite George being rude and Mary's mother unimpressed and Gerald, her oldest brother, outraged and disparaging, Mary didn't change her mind. In part, she was too smitten. In part, her brother George's pompous behavior only made George look not so bad (and rather underscores the idea that people date what they are used to, making it lucky for Mary that Inspector Charles Parker decided to pursue her). 

On the other side, the unsuitable suitor can learn and change. So Tom Selleck's Elliot in Mr. Baseball doesn't turn into a Japanese man but does adapt to Japanese cultural expectations during a visit to his girlfriend (and boss's) home.

Romance Archetype: The One That Got Away

The one that got away is a common archetype in romance. In many ways, it is rather lovely and reminiscent of the parable of the lost sheep. There is something incredibly attractive to human beings that missed chances/opportunities/beloveds are still within reach. 

And it quite honestly isn't one of my favorite tropes. 

My problems with the trope in romance are two-fold:

1. Regret is a waste of time. 

In Sense & Sensibility, Willoughby regrets his choice to marry for money rather than love. Eleanor reflects that he would have regretted marrying for love if he'd actually done so. His regrets are the regrets of people who create utopias: the idea or expectation that life choices can be moved around a person's life like pieces on a chessboard rather than as organic events that arise from experience and lead to the next experience. 

Joe versus The Volcano is the reality: "It's a long, crooked road that brought me here to you." People can make new choices but they can't unwind the road. They go forward from where they are.

2. People do move on. 

There's a rather unexpected NCIS episode in which a woman comes to the United States to track down her husband. She is absolutely sure that he is still waiting, unmarried, endlessly hopeful of their reunion. 

When the team find him, he is married. He isn't a bad guy (and the writers give him the excuse that he thought the wife was dead). It's been several years. He moved on. 

Despite my problems with the trope in romance, I am a fan of the implicit grace of the trope. Combine religion and romance and one gets the fantastic ending of Babette's Feast. It isn't so much that one gets to rewind. In the end, everything is granted one. We don't have to bargain with God.