I was recently reading Wuthering Heights, and it struck me how frequently romantic novels with employ the trope of the female lead being ill, and/or dying of her illness. I don’t know what’s romantic about it . . . maybe the idea of wasting away putting a time limit on things, or that fragility making her more feminine?
Also, I think often men will have wives who die in childbirth in these stories. I can definitely see why writers pursue this angle: it allows them to be available without actually having gone through the seediness of a break up, and it makes the child’s existence sort of bittersweet, and it lends the hero an area of sexy tragicness.
What are some others? The two I mentioned are more old-fashioned, but I’d love to hear about modern romantic tropes as well. Like in romcoms, they often show the heroine, after a failed attempt at woo, dejectedly go the airport to catch her plane to Far Away. Suddenly she turns around at the gate and sees her breathless love standing there, waiting to take her home with him.
Or Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, or one of any number of bad RomComs, an oddly large number of which star Tom Hanks and (especially) Meg Ryan.
Hot but unconfident girl has a crush on the hot, confident guy, who pursues other hot but shallow girls until he finally realizes that the hot, unconfident girl has been the right one all along.
Because a single adult who was never married is too creepy for a romantic lead. A dead wife is the only thing that keeps an adult single but still “normal”.
A childbirth death allows you to have a single father who didn’t show poor judgment in marring a deadbeat wife.
Otherwise known as “See, you were actually quite beautiful (and therefore acceptable to society and worthy of love) all the time, you just didn’t know how to take advantage of it (due to your own innocence, lack of sexual maturity, or general social immaturity).”
Gag.
I think that’s the one that bothers me the most.
Don’t forget the:
Girl pines over unavailable guy (usually due to social standing or wealth reasons) and then either falls in love with same unavailable guy in disguise, or with another person who ends up being just as wealthy as (but nicer than!) the original one.
Sabrina, Twelfth Night, Enchanted, and all of those really bad maids or bartenders or call-girls falling in love with millionaires films.
Hmm… secondary question: did the use of “romantic” in the current sense of a style, scene or mood setting that suits a love-story, come to us from its past use as a descriptor of the literary style in which these archetypal works were written? That is to say: would love scenes and love stories have been referred to as “romantic” before 1800, or only after it became common to see love scenes/stories written that way?
Which is frequently comorbid with hot guy dates the strange girl on a dare (or is paid) but comes to really love her…just as she finds out about the dare.
see also: She’s All That; Ten Things I Hate About You
Not really. The meaning for the term “romance” changes depending on who you’re talking to and what you’re talking about. It also depends on why you are categorizing books–Wuthering Heights would never, ever be sold as a romance today (that is, it wouldn’t be placed in the romance section) because one absolutely required trope is a happily ever after for the main protagonists. It also wouldn’t be referred to as a “romance” in the standard literature class, because it’s not, though it obviously comes from the Romantic tradition, which has nothing to do with love stories at all. However, when you trace the evolution of the modern romance novel, it’s pretty obvious that it wouldn’t exist as a genre without the Bronte Sisters (and the Gothic tradition in general) and Jane Austen. So grouping them all together under one umbrella as the OP did still makes perfect sense, and we all understand the tropes she means.
Basically, though, there’s only so many ways to tell the story of two people who meet and fall in love and then either get together or die. And I’m pretty sure Shakespeare told every single one of them, so we just get reiterations of the theme.
Actually that is a better description of what the basis of my question was. Does the descriptor of “romance” and for that matter the use of the word “romantic” as referring to that having to do with love, derive from an *oversimplified shorthand *reference to the Romantic/Gothic Tradition that somehow stuck to these themes as opposed to all others that the Romantics wrote about, and even though the “love’s trials” scenario preceded them by centuries (at least to “Courtly Love” literature in the late Middle Ages/Early Renaissance).
“Oversimplified shorthand”? The meanings of words change over the years–whether or not we approve. Sometimes words retain multiple meanings.
For example: Gothic. Are we talking about Alaric & his pals, pointy-towered cathedrals, occult doings in convents or chicks with black fingernail polish?
Concerning the widowers in the OP. In those days, many women did die during childbirth–or just afterwards. So there was many a widower looking for wifie #2. But, even in modern stories, young widowers are more “romantic” than divorced guys. The reader of modern romances is probably bored sick with guys bitching about paying child support; she wants escapism.
Modern Romances are mostly books for women–or “chick flicks”. Olden Romances included Deeds of Knightly Valor along with the Courtly Love; male-oriented romances are now called Thrillers–or “action movies”.
It is amazing how many romantic movies involve couples going from hating each other to deep love for each other and then when you think about it you realize that they only spent three hours together total over the course of whatever timespan is depicted in the movie.
IMO, a lot of romance is about tapping into women’s fantasies. So, instead of looking for why this might make the woman more appealing to men, consider how this might be a woman’s fantasy. I know that when I was young, I would daydream about how being ill in a hospital and having that cute guy I had a crush on show up and declare his love.
What can I say, I was sixteen…
Another point here is that Wuthering Heights was written in a time when books generally ended tragically. I think that you’ll find that modern romances are much less likely to end in death.
Ugh. This is one of the most common and annoying romance novel bad plots I’ve encountered. I call it the F-plot: fight, fight, fight, fight, fuck, fight, fight, fuck, fi… wait, fucking is way more fun.
Because it allows their love to remain “pure and beautiful” forever. IOW, she doesn’t turn into a fat, overbearing middle-aged woman he can no longer stand to be around as they fight about money, the kids and whatnot.
Off the top of my head:
The on-again / off-again through the ages couple. (When Harry Met Sally, Definitely Maybe, Dear John, Sweet Home Alabama)
Is He Ever Going to Pop The Question couple. (Leap Year, The Weding Planner, He’s Just Not That Into You [Affleck and Aniston] )
He Don’t Wanna Grow Up couple. (High Fidelity, Role Models, Knocked Up)
She’s Out of My League couple (She’s Out of My League, Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, Say Anything)
Don’t Wanna Be A Playa No More couple (Hitch, Van Wilder, The Pick Up Artist, Boomerang)
My Girlfriend is Magical couple (Splash, Enchanted, The Fifth Element)
Not quite. The analogue to “My Girlfriend is Magical” is usually the “Who Wants to Live Forever*” relationship. Basically a mortal human woman falls in love with an immortal (or vampire) man. (Twilight, Dracula, (really ALL vampire love stories), Highlander, Peter Pan, Pirates of the Carribean). Of course the woman grows old and eventually dies of old age while the immortal man spends the rest of eternity sulking. I can’t think of a single instance where the man ages while the woman remains immortal. Possibly Lord of the Rings, but Arwen gave up her immortality.
Let’s face it. We guys might love you forever. We just don’t want to live with you forever.
*Named for the Queen song on the Highlander soundtrack.
That was actually part of the backstory of the Jonathan Barrett: Gentleman Vampire series. The female vampire who turned the title character was shocked when he turned up as a vampire himself, because she’d tried again and again and all that happened was that her lovers aged normally and stayed dead. Apparently it’s a fairly common pattern in that world, since vampirism there is in many ways desirable but difficult to “catch”.
I know I’ve come across other cases but my mind is blanking. I recall a time traveling episode of Justice League where at the end the immortal Wonder Woman visits one of the WWII era soldiers, now an elderly invalid, but I don’t recall if there were romantic elements or not.
