Best Love Stories in Literature
Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, and Romeo and Juliet
May 28, 2009
What is the greatest love story ever told? It’s probably one involving young people, a love triangle, and brief or forbidden romance. These are the common elements shared by three great literary romances.
The Young Love Theme
These writers argue that no one loves quite like the young. First love, in particular, is an overwhelmingly powerful feeling. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the young lovers are teenagers. Cathy and Heathcliff develop a deep, lasting bond as children in Wuthering Heights. Similarly, in The Great Gatsby, Daisy and Gatsby fall in love when Daisy is a young woman.
The argument seems to be that the power of young love is stronger than that of love at an older age, especially once life gets in the way. These stories seem to suggest that the intensity of first love is not likely to be duplicated in other relationships.
A Love Triangle
Drama is created for these young lovers when a third person becomes involved and a love triangle is developed. For example, in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is promised to Paris, a man her parents approve of for a husband. Though she is not in love with him, the pressure from her family is overwhelming for Juliet.
In Wuthering Heights, Cathy marries Edgar Linton, mainly because he has money and status, which Heathcliff, her true love, lacks. Edgar loves Cathy, but he is not able to keep her content; her heart is with Heathcliff. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy marries Tom Buchanan for arguably the same reason Cathy marries Heathcliff. However, though Daisy still has feelings for Gatsby, she decides to stay with Tom in the life she has grown accustom to.
The usual result of the love triangle is jealousy, which can then lead to drastic measures taken by the jealous.
Brief or Forbidden Romance
Despite the strong feelings of the young people in love, the world tends to get in the way of their relationships. In these romances, it is likely that the lovers’ time together is brief, usually resulting in tragedy.
In both The Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights, social pressures interfere, and the leading ladies marry men who are more socially acceptable than the men they originally fell in love with. Because they still carry feelings for their first loves, they end up having brief, emotionally tumultuous affairs with them at some point in their adult lives.
Romeo and Juliet has the lovers’ time together cut short by tragedy. Romeo and Juliet both die in the end, due largely to the fact that their love was forbidden by their families. This idea of forbidden love is seen in all three stories, whether it is due to disapproving parents or the fact that the lovers are married to other people.
The brief happiness of the couples during their time together is in sharp contrast to the tragedy of death in these tales. In fact, at least one member of each couple in these three romances dies.
The Popular New Love Stories
These characteristics stand the test of time when it comes to writing a tragic love story. Many of the elements, like young couples and a love triangle, are used in modern-day bestselling romances, such as The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks and The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. However, these newer stories are changing the ending. The romances are not cut short; the couples stay together.
These new bestsellers are a very different kind of romance, despite keeping some of the same elements as the classics. It will be interesting to see if this updated formula stands the test of time like the tragic classics have.
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