It’s that time of year again, when pundits come up with lists of the most important love stories of all time…You’ll often find these make the grade:
Romeo and Juliet (1597) by William Shakespeare
Anna Karenina (1877) by Leo Tolstoy
Doctor Zhivago (1957) by Boris Pasternak
Love Story (1970) by Erich Segal
The Notebook (1996) by Nicholas Sparks
Bridges of Madison County (1992) Robert James Waller
Cold Mountain (1997) Charles Fraizer
The Great Gatsby(1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
What do they have in common, dear readers? Here’s my list:
1.They are written by men
2. Things don’t end well.
Now, let’s consider:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte
Gone With The Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
Yes. Written by women, and.... everybody gets to survive. Even the heroine of problematic Gone With the Wind is left with the Pandora’s Box gift of hope.
Why are there so many modern Jane Austen variations? So many sequels to popular HEA (Happy Ever After) romances? Why does Lizzy solve mysteries and the Bennet sisters battle zombies?
Because romantic happy ever afters are not dead ends of grief and regret (and, as in those crazy kids Romeo and Juliet: bad timing).
Happy Ever Afters leave us to imagine the future. Did the lovers make good parents? How did they handle the slings and arrows of life? Did they grow stronger together? In short, were they brave enough for their Happy Ever After?
So… give me Jane Austen’s Emma and and Lizzy. Give me Charlotte’s indomitable Jane, and Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Rosalind and Portia. They are brave enough to last through a long and wonderful life with their heroes.
