Michael Osborne

That which is Sought Should Not Always Be Found: Exploring the Romance Narrative

          The romance narrative is nearly ubiquitous in modern American art and entertainment.  It is overwhelmingly prevalent, and yet, romance narratives are rarely recognized for what they are. This lack of recognition occurs because we are so saturated in the romance narrative that we have become blind to its presence, in much the same way that you can become “nose-blind” to the smell of your own home.

          It is important to create a necessary distinction between the commonly used term romance and the literary use of the term, romance narrative. A romance is a love story or a story about lovers, as can be seen in any local bookstore.  Contrariwise, a romance narrative is “a broader, more inclusive type of story or narrative that usually features a hero's or heroine's journey or quest through tests and trials (often involving a villain or antagonist) in order to reach a transcendent goal, whether love, salvation (or rescue), or justice (usually revenge)” (White, “Romance”). The two terms are particularly easy to confuse, since romance (love) stories often follow the pattern or structure of a “romance narrative.” Therefore, it is important to remember that a romance can be a romance narrative, but a romance narrative is not necessarily a romance.

          The romance narrative is the “essential narrative of popular literature,” and we have encountered multiple examples of it this semester (White, “Romance”). It is a flexible and malleable narrative genre that often functions in ways not immediately apparent to the reader, as can be seen in “The Brother,” the fourth part of Thomas Wolfe’s novella, The Lost Boy.

          In “The Brother,” Eugene returns to St. Louis, searching for the house his family lived in during their time in the city, the house in which his brother, Grover, passed away. It becomes apparent very quickly in the story that Eugene is on a quest, but it is not simply the house that he is seeking, that is just his destination.  What Eugene is questing for is far more ephemeral, and it is possible that Eugene himself is not entirely sure what he is after, as seen when he cannot “tell her [the current occupant of the house] what it was that he was looking for” (4.34). What Eugene is seeking is never specifically mentioned in the text; however, Wolfe’s repeated use of the word absence indicates that Eugene is trying to fill some void within himself, though he seems unsure how to do so.

          The trials Eugene must overcome to resolve his quest are his memory and the changes the city has undergone in the thirty years since he lived there. In fact, he has forgotten the address of the house, and must rely on a few scant geographic details he remembers (4.41).  Eugene does eventually find the house, and the new occupant lets him look around inside. In doing so, and in confronting the room where his brother died, Eugene finds some form of solace, reaching a new and transcendent state. After confronting his brother’s room, Eugene knows “that the dark eye and the quiet face of his friend and brother—poor child, life's stranger, and life's exile, lost like all of us, a cipher in blind mazes, long ago—the lost boy was gone forever, and would not return.” (4.119). Of course, because of the power of the romance narrative, as well as Wolfe’s brilliance, the reader is never completely sure whether the titular lost boy is Grover, or Eugene.

          One of the resulting strengths of the pervasiveness of the romance narrative is its ability to work on an assumptive level. In this case, the romance narrative does not have to be specifically detailed for the reader to assume that it is happening, with all of its usual trappings and structure.  An example of this assumptive romance narrative is Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “Ligeia.” This story is extremely elusive, so much so that the titular character may not even be real, but may just be a hallucination.  This elusiveness is compounded by the unreliable Narrator, resulting in critical interpretation of the story that spans a wide range of possibilities, from a supernatural ghost story to the mad ravings of an opium addict. For the purposes of this essay, I will stay with the traditional interpretation that Ligeia is a real character and the story contains supernatural elements.

          In this story, it is not the Narrator, but the titular Ligeia, who undergoes a quest, and therefore follows the romance narrative, even though the events of that narrative are not revealed to the reader.  As she lay dying, Ligeia uses her last breath to murmur the final line of the story’s epigraph. “’Man doth not yield him to the angels,’” she says, “’nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will’” (13). Ligeia is described as having a “gigantic volition,” or in other words, an indomitable will (7). Therefore, Ligeia is not one who will succumb to death; instead, she harnessed her great force of will and undertakes a quest to conquer death and return to the realm of the living.

          The reader is not privy to the details of Ligeia’s quest, save for the beginning (her death) and the end (her return in Rowena’s body). Even without those details, however, Ligeia’s return clearly matches the pattern of a romance narrative.  The action of the story begins with separation (her death), we can infer that her return takes the form of a journey back to the realm of the living involving tests and trials (crossing boundaries), and her quest concludes with Ligeia reaching her transcendent goal by escaping the underworld, or whatever form the afterlife takes in the story (White, “Romance”). All of this action takes place off the page, and yet, because the structure of the romance narrative is ingrained into our collective consciousness through repetition, it is easy to see Ligeia’s return as the romance narrative it is.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” is (seemingly) one of the most traditional romance narratives we encountered this semester. The main character, Dexter Green, is the son of a moderately successful businessman and a Bohemian mother of the peasant class (1.1, 3.2).  Dexter lives a fairly comfortable life compared to his peers, but he learns at a relatively young age that that is not enough for him.  Dexter wants “not association with glittering things and glittering people – he [wants] the glittering things themselves” (2.1). With the additional influence of Judy Jones, Dexter falls completely under the spell of the American Dream, bending all of his will towards the acquisition of wealth and the associated status that accompanies it.  His quest to realize that dream is the romance narrative.

True to any romance narrative, Dexter must overcome tests and trials during his quest for wealth.  He faces financial hardship while attending university (2.1), and works hard to carve a niche for himself, eventually owning “the largest string of laundries in his section of the country” before the age of twenty-seven (2.3). He also encounters many trials during his courtship of Judy Jones, whom he folds into his version of the American Dream, including her inability to commit to a relationship, the dissolution of his engagement to Irene Scheerer, and eventually winning Judy, only to lose her one month later (5.1).

A the end of his quest, Dexter does reach a transcendent state, but it is not in the way the reader would expect, and this is why the story only seems to be a traditional romance narrative. Seven years after his shattered engagement, Dexter is living in New York, more successful than he has ever been. He learns that Judy Jones has finally settled down, taken a husband, and had children. Shockingly, he learns that she is no longer considered a great beauty. At the loss of this long held ideal, something in Dexter breaks.  He lays down in his office, sobbing, as he realizes everything he has given up in his greedy pursuit. “’Long ago,’” he says, “’long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more’” (6.36). With these words, Fitzgerald’s twist on the romance narrative comes to fruition. Dexter bends all his will to his quest, endures the various tests and trials that accompany it, and eventually has the wealth he has sought for so long.  In the end, though, neither his wealth nor his status bring him any happiness.  His dreams are gone. He has transcended the illusions he has held his entire life, only to realize that all that is left without them is emptiness.

Due to its malleability, the romance narrative remains, and probably will remain, the dominant narrative structure in American storytelling, whether in book or film. The quest through hardship and trial to realize a transcendent goal seems to have become an inherent part of our character. We may almost never recognize it anymore, but it is all around us. It is in almost every story we encounter, and secretly, in our minds and in our dreams, we live it every day.