Rose Lerner’s Sweet Disorder released this week, and she is here today to talk a little bit about it. I adored this book and will be reviewing it later this morning.
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience contrast two opposite views of the world: that it’s a safe place full of joy, and that it’s a scary place full of sorrow and anger. One poem I’ve always loved is “The Clod and the Pebble,” which poses a question central to the romance genre and to Sweet Disorder—What does it mean to love someone?—and suggests two different answers:
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”
So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet:
“Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to Its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”
***
The heroine of Sweet Disorder, Phoebe, is a book lover, and her first husband was a left-wing printer and newspaper editor, so it made sense to me that they would be Blake fans. I put the book in their collection, which Phoebe sold to pay the doctor when her husband was dying. It’s lingered on the bookseller’s shelves ever since, until Nick buys it back for her. Here’s the bit in the book where Nick and Phoebe discuss the poem:
The bookseller raised his eyebrows. “Auspicious day! I began to believe I would take that book to my grave despite all Mrs. Sparks’s efforts to talk some wide-eyed gull into buying it.”
“It’s lovely,” Nick said.
The bookseller shrugged. “Even with my spectacles the text is impossible to read.”
Nick opened the book. The bloom of color and feeling was expected now, but still startling. He didn’t want to close it again. Love seeketh not Itself to please, he read.
“The clod believes that love is selfless,” Phoebe said at his elbow. “But the pebble says love is selfish, and grasping.” By the end of the sentence, her voice was tense. Evidently it was a question that troubled her.
“Which do you believe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Young people.” The bookseller snorted, handing Nick a half-crown. “Both are true.”
***
Romance is all bound up in this question, and every book answers it slightly differently: what does it mean to really love somebody? Does it mean you have to have him, no matter the cost? Does it mean you would give up everything for her, even your chance to be with her, to make her happy?
The bookseller says both are true, and I do believe that, in a way. Loving another person is an incredibly complex experience. Why else would we enjoy so many fantasies about kinds of relationships we’d never want to have in real life, if not because they take one aspect of what’s in our hearts and amplify it in an intensely recognizable way?
I know I have a bit of the possessive and obsessive in me, and seeing it writ large is amazing: the Demon’s Lexicon books by Sarah Rees Brennan, Jane Eyre, Loki and Thor, Lord of Scoundrels. (Double points if one of the characters literally does not care about anyone else: “I would burn down the world for you.” Why yes I do love evil power couples, why do you ask?)
Even more often than that, though, I dig the heroically self-sacrificing stories. One of my earliest major book crushes was on Sydney Carton. Give me a hero who says “I want you to be happy more than I want to be happy, myself,” and I will swoon all over the place.
“There is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you.” Image via Wikimedia Commons.
::happy sigh::
But the answer Nick and Phoebe come to, actually, is: neither. In this story, both selfishness and selflessness turn out to mean unilaterally making decisions for another person. And to really love someone is to let them decide for themselves, and to expect that they will do the same for you. Love might make you feel, I would do anything to have you, and I would do anything to make you happy, but in a relationship, you have to negotiate choices based on more than just what you feel.
I’m not going to say that’s a definitive answer. I don’t think there is a definitive answer. But it’s an answer I’ve been really enjoying in stories recently, and the one I wanted to explore in this particular book.
What’s your favorite romance, and how does it answer this question?
One commenter will be chosen at random to receive a free e-book of Sweet Disorder, and one commenter will be chosen from the entire blog tour to receive an awesome prize package that includes tie-in pinback buttons, bookmarks, bacon-scented candles, a bookstore gift card, and much, much more! (This drawing is open internationally. Void where prohibited.)
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Outlander by Diana Gabaldon is my fav. Jamie and Claire definitely believe in giving up everything to make the person they love happy. They are both such beautiful souls.
Still haven’t read that one, but I’ve heard a lot of great things!
Geez… I’ve read so many satisfying romances. Sometimes I’m in the mood for selfishness and others sacrifice. Hmmm…. We idealize the selfless love, but so, so often feel and experience the selfish kind. The Greeks had 3 different categories for love: AGAPE (noble/selfless love),EROS (smexy love) and PHILIA (bestie love). I think it’s all a continuum.
So anyway, Ella Frank’s Try is an interesting study in selfish and erotic fascination and how it transforms into something potentially better and healthier.
>We idealize the selfless love, but so, so often feel and >experience the selfish kind.
So true! But I bet that’s part of why the selfless love story resonates so strongly, because we can identify with the struggle to not act on those selfish impulses (even if we experience that struggle on a much smaller scale usually).
Ooh, Try looks awesome! I love me a good hot bartender story. :)
My favorite romance is Sherry Thomas’s Not Quite a Husband. Quinton definitely sacrifices for Bryony. When they divorce he chooses only job opportunities that will keep him close enough to her in case she needs him without her knowing and feeling smothered. He made his life about making her happy but didn’t actually know how to do that for most of the book. Bryony doesn’t seem to give up as much for Quinton but she learns to let go of old insecurities and past hurt to be the wife he wants her to be.
That book is amazing, isn’t it? So intense! Although I think my favorite of hers might still be Private Arrangements. It’s so hard to choose!
I love Private Arrangements too. You really can’t go wrong with Sherry Thomas!
pride and prejudice; they don’t give up anything bad for each other
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I’m going to answer this question a little differently than other commenters, so I’ll say that friends-to-lovers stories are my favorite romances. That scenario is my ideal blending of the three Greek types of love mentioned by LauraB. I attribute this preference to the fact that the first couple I shipped was Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe.
Awww, Anne/Gilbert! My favorite Green Gables book was actually the one where they were having marital problems, and she thought he was in love with that other woman but HE WASN’T. (I really remember very little about the book now, but I read it over and over in middle school.) The romance books were always my favorites in children’s series, weirdly enough: These Happy Golden Years, Betsy’s Wedding (from the Betsy/Tacy books)…
Persuassion. Even after so long being apart they see each other and rekindle their love. He blamed her for the longest for their unhappiness but in the end nothing matter. She thought she was being selfless by thinking about their family, he thought she was being selfish for only thinking about her feelings.
I love Persuasion! The scene towards the end in the shop where she sees him out the window and is trying to decide whether or not to go the door to “see if it’s still raining” is AMAZING (and such an unusual example of deep 3rd person limited POV for the period, at least in my reading experience). But I have to admit that I was a little annoyed that in the end, he had to admit he was totally wrong about everything while she insisted that she behaved correctly in taking Lady Russell’s advice even if it was terrible advice.
My all time favourite couple is Ross and Demelza Poldark, especially the book version of the saga. They stay together and make the partnership work in spite of the difference in their backgrounds and all the external conflicts that get thrown at them.
How do the book and series compare? I just watched the first…half, maybe? of the series and while I enjoyed it very much and liked the romance once Demelza was older, Ross came off as a bit of an alphhole. I especially got very angry at him when he gave Demelza’s wages to her father and didn’t protect her from him. (I mean, I get that maybe legally he didn’t have much choice, but he was such a JERK about it.) Do you think I’d like the books better?
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The books definitely deal a lot more with both the politics of the time, and with the domestic situations of the main character. As well they ought, given how many longish books there were compared to short TV episodes.
Ross isn’t perfect, but he’s a man of his time, and pretty decent in most situations given that setting (the thing with Elizabeth in one of the later books not so much, but that event has repercussions for everyone involved throughout the series from then on).
I think the books are worth your time reading, if only because you get to see how things develop later on in the characters’ lives than was shown in the original BBC series.