Alex Beecroft's M/M Shining in the Sun is a good example of a Romeo & Juliet (or, in this case, Romeo & Romeo) tale working. The
main characters, Alec and Darren, come from different social classes.
How do they overcome internal and external pressures to part?
Beecroft's
answer is for Alec and Darren to acknowledge the stressful differences.
When Darren has to meet Alec's well-to-do, Lady Catherine-like mama, he
resents being "put on display" as well as the subtle ways in which the
mama and the waiters at the fancy restaurant make him feel uncouth.
Likewise, when Alec goes to meet Darren's grandmother, he is appalled by
the woman's poverty.
The
latter scene is fairly brilliant. Darren wants Alec to meet his
grandmother; Darren himself has always been impressed by how clean she
keeps her tiny house; how hard she works to wear matching slacks and
pullovers. Then he sees his grandmother through Alec's eyes. The house
is clean but shabby (and lacking in basic amenities). His grandmother's
dress is presentable yet threadbare (and Walmart cheap, not haute couture). He resents Alec for this new perspective.
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| A Juliet and Romeo who seem to know what they signed up for. |
Both Alec and Darren have to overcome their judgments and resentments in order to move forward.
Without
an acknowledgement of their differences, Romeo & Romeo or Romeo
& Juliet or Juliet & Juliet (and so on and so forth) will stall and disintegrate, leaving the reader with the
awful instinctual knowledge, "This relationship is doomed--even if
nobody dies."
