Beginnings of Lists

Three is a start, although I am apparently missing the point of a top ten list. "What's on that top ten list?" "Oh, you know, just my unranked three."

But it's my blog and I can fail to live up to my own expectations if I want to.

So, three to start:

1. Darcy and Elizabeth, Pride and Predjudice

Like, duh! Sure, Colin Firth's smoldering sexpot eyes in the BBC adaptation helped this romance leap into the hearts and VCRs of women worldwide. Still, the romance has a merit of its own.

It's easy to forget that in the book the outcome seems uncertain because the D/E courtship certainly helped establish the romantic comedy genre of "hate at first sight, then fall in love later but only after some serious issues and the guy totally comes back and gets the girl so she doesn't seem too undignified, but then she totally apologizes for thinking he was a brute or a snob or whatever his deal is when it turns out he is sensitive and so much fun all the time."

The genre has made our expectations of eventual reconciliation and romance somewhat less than suspenseful, but in the novel it's not that simple and Darcy and Elizabeth overcome some genuinely difficult differences to establish their luuuuuvvvvv. They hate each other. Darcy does a genuinely uncharitable, (and, to Elizabeth -very bad) thing, and then they
both change - independently, but because of what they've confronted because of the other.

Which, as I re-read this, makes it seem so pragmatic and mature. There are sparks. Big sparks. Don't believe me? Have seven hours to spare? I have a BBC mini-series that will put your bloomers in a bunch.

And, ha! I am out of writing time! So there is just ONE!

Here are some more as memory creaks into gear.

2. Oliver and Susan, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
3. Gabriel/Gretta/Michael, "The Dead" in Dubliners
4. Jack Burden and Anne Stanton, All The King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren

I didn't say they had to be happy.