Raoul and Christine in Love
Nov. 26th, 2022 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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vicomte_de_chagnyI wrote this back on 14 February 2020 on a general writing forum in response to the question of how to write romance: Do you think it's counterproductive to pin down a specific list of "reasons why X loves Y" and vice versa? The thread recently resurfaced, which reminded me of it.
My instinctive response is that this simply isn't the way that love *works*.
It tends to come down to 'X loves Y because Y is Y' ; Y doesn't have to be good-looking, or clever, or have a shared past with X. X loves Y because he craves Y's attention and affection, even if he doesn't get it and even if he doesn't know why he wants it or what makes normal, perfectly ordinary Y any different from everyone else he knows. Just *being Y* makes her special and exciting, and anything connected to her special too.
And the difference between 'friend' and 'romantic' partner *is* pretty much physical, to me. You can be ready to sacrifice your life for a friend or mentor -- but that doesn't mean you feel any sexual desire for him (ouch, what a horrid idea). A romantic partner is someone with whom there is a sexual connection, even if it doesn't involve any copulation of any kind; someone for whom touch holds a significance.
In canon, we don't know *why* Raoul and Christine love each other; there are various reasons why they *might*, but it's not suggested that any of these are the root cause of their relationship. For example, we're told that Christine grows up to be very beautiful -- but we're also told that Raoul experiences this as an impediment to his affections because he is shy and feels he can't aspire to her, rather than her good looks being the cause of his changed feelings. And we're told that they were inseparable as children, but it's when they meet again as adolescents that they become conscious of an extra charge between them, for no specific reason other than that they are older and aware of one another in a different way.
As adults they fall in love from a distance, and without either of them even consciously admitting it to themselves until circumstances in each case force a separate realisation; there is no 'why' or 'why now', there is just a 'now I know' (without being able to do anything about it at that moment, since the plot keeps them apart). Christine is the realist -- they're both the same age, but she is more mature. She knows there's no future in it, so she tries to deflect Raoul's halting attentions. Raoul is the impulsive romantic (I suspect him of having grown up on a diet of his older sisters' bedside reading, but that's just my head-canon ;-p) who fluctuates between helpless jealousy (why is Christine randomly giving him the cold shoulder? Why is she behaving so weirdly? What is she *up to*?), agonising insecurity, and ardent protestations. He's ready to plunge into love in a cottage; Christine doesn't want him to break with his family and ruin his future on her account.
And all the same they love one another, despite their quarrels, despite Christine's evasions and disappearances (the reason for which is not revealed to Raoul -- and the reader -- until halfway through the book). Raoul has a painful inferiority complex and Christine is trapped in the consequences of a past mistake caused by her own innocence and faith; she doesn't want to endanger the man she loves by enmeshing him in her own impending fate.
There isn't any 'why'; they're star-crossed lovers whom social conventions (his family are aristocratic and disapproving, she is an orphan earning her living in an occupation regarded as only one step above prostitution) and circumstances conspire to keep apart, and who snatch secret happiness in the most innocent of meetings and quarrel repeatedly like the children that they are. And ultimately Raoul grows up enough to offer to help her escape even if that means that he will never see her again, and after that escape goes horribly wrong Christine offers to sacrifice her own future for Raoul's life... and when it's all over the constraints of social convention seem very unimportant. They run away out of the pages of the book (which goes on to tell someone else's story) and are married off-screen, and, according to the narrator, live happily ever after and far off. That's canon.
When I'm writing the characters thinking about one another, I'm not writing "I love her because..."; I'm writing "these are all the things that make her Christine, and that are precious to me". Christine doesn't think "Oh, he's my fairytale prince" (despite the fact that she does actually describe him that way, somewhat tongue in cheek, when introducing him at one point in the novel ;-p) -- she thinks how dear and flawed he is and how much she wants to protect him, and how unexpectedly proud she is when she comes across something that he actually does better than her :-p
And there's the physical undercurrent -- their canon relationship is *completely* innocent, despite all the passionate agonizing (they kiss precisely twice, and the first time is at Christine's instigation, which by the social conventions of the day is a demonstration of her complete commitment), but from my own experience the awareness is there, even if you don't know where it leads or have the intention to act on it. So part of how they get from A to B is that realization that there is an additional element there.
That's pretty much straight from the canon scene of the characters falling for one another in adolescence (elle alla se réfugier sur un banc dans la solitude du jardin. Elle éprouvait des sentiments qui s'agitaient dans son coeur adolescent pour la première fois. Raoul vint la rejoindre et ils causèrent jusqu'au soir, dans un grand embarras) with added hand-holding -- no more *explicit* than the original, and something that one can easily imagine having happened in that sketchily-described scene (and in fact I had to look up the relevant passage to check that it wasn't actually included!), but the mutual consciousness is present.
My instinctive response is that this simply isn't the way that love *works*.
It tends to come down to 'X loves Y because Y is Y' ; Y doesn't have to be good-looking, or clever, or have a shared past with X. X loves Y because he craves Y's attention and affection, even if he doesn't get it and even if he doesn't know why he wants it or what makes normal, perfectly ordinary Y any different from everyone else he knows. Just *being Y* makes her special and exciting, and anything connected to her special too.
And the difference between 'friend' and 'romantic' partner *is* pretty much physical, to me. You can be ready to sacrifice your life for a friend or mentor -- but that doesn't mean you feel any sexual desire for him (ouch, what a horrid idea). A romantic partner is someone with whom there is a sexual connection, even if it doesn't involve any copulation of any kind; someone for whom touch holds a significance.
In canon, we don't know *why* Raoul and Christine love each other; there are various reasons why they *might*, but it's not suggested that any of these are the root cause of their relationship. For example, we're told that Christine grows up to be very beautiful -- but we're also told that Raoul experiences this as an impediment to his affections because he is shy and feels he can't aspire to her, rather than her good looks being the cause of his changed feelings. And we're told that they were inseparable as children, but it's when they meet again as adolescents that they become conscious of an extra charge between them, for no specific reason other than that they are older and aware of one another in a different way.
As adults they fall in love from a distance, and without either of them even consciously admitting it to themselves until circumstances in each case force a separate realisation; there is no 'why' or 'why now', there is just a 'now I know' (without being able to do anything about it at that moment, since the plot keeps them apart). Christine is the realist -- they're both the same age, but she is more mature. She knows there's no future in it, so she tries to deflect Raoul's halting attentions. Raoul is the impulsive romantic (I suspect him of having grown up on a diet of his older sisters' bedside reading, but that's just my head-canon ;-p) who fluctuates between helpless jealousy (why is Christine randomly giving him the cold shoulder? Why is she behaving so weirdly? What is she *up to*?), agonising insecurity, and ardent protestations. He's ready to plunge into love in a cottage; Christine doesn't want him to break with his family and ruin his future on her account.
And all the same they love one another, despite their quarrels, despite Christine's evasions and disappearances (the reason for which is not revealed to Raoul -- and the reader -- until halfway through the book). Raoul has a painful inferiority complex and Christine is trapped in the consequences of a past mistake caused by her own innocence and faith; she doesn't want to endanger the man she loves by enmeshing him in her own impending fate.
There isn't any 'why'; they're star-crossed lovers whom social conventions (his family are aristocratic and disapproving, she is an orphan earning her living in an occupation regarded as only one step above prostitution) and circumstances conspire to keep apart, and who snatch secret happiness in the most innocent of meetings and quarrel repeatedly like the children that they are. And ultimately Raoul grows up enough to offer to help her escape even if that means that he will never see her again, and after that escape goes horribly wrong Christine offers to sacrifice her own future for Raoul's life... and when it's all over the constraints of social convention seem very unimportant. They run away out of the pages of the book (which goes on to tell someone else's story) and are married off-screen, and, according to the narrator, live happily ever after and far off. That's canon.
When I'm writing the characters thinking about one another, I'm not writing "I love her because..."; I'm writing "these are all the things that make her Christine, and that are precious to me". Christine doesn't think "Oh, he's my fairytale prince" (despite the fact that she does actually describe him that way, somewhat tongue in cheek, when introducing him at one point in the novel ;-p) -- she thinks how dear and flawed he is and how much she wants to protect him, and how unexpectedly proud she is when she comes across something that he actually does better than her :-p
And there's the physical undercurrent -- their canon relationship is *completely* innocent, despite all the passionate agonizing (they kiss precisely twice, and the first time is at Christine's instigation, which by the social conventions of the day is a demonstration of her complete commitment), but from my own experience the awareness is there, even if you don't know where it leads or have the intention to act on it. So part of how they get from A to B is that realization that there is an additional element there.
He swallowed and reached over to brush her sleeve with his fingers, where her own lay locked inviolate in her lap.
She trembled beneath his touch, and he flinched and snatched the importunate hand away, staring straight out into the garden in his turn. But a moment later small, hesitant fingers crept across into his, answering the shy pressure of his response with movement of their own, so that his stilted answers to her conversation came more and more at random than ever, while their fingers made reply to each other on a subject that neither could voice.
That's pretty much straight from the canon scene of the characters falling for one another in adolescence (elle alla se réfugier sur un banc dans la solitude du jardin. Elle éprouvait des sentiments qui s'agitaient dans son coeur adolescent pour la première fois. Raoul vint la rejoindre et ils causèrent jusqu'au soir, dans un grand embarras) with added hand-holding -- no more *explicit* than the original, and something that one can easily imagine having happened in that sketchily-described scene (and in fact I had to look up the relevant passage to check that it wasn't actually included!), but the mutual consciousness is present.
