Fritz Eichenberg, “Jane Eyre”
Valentine’s Day
Better than going out on a Valentine’s Day date, curl up up with your favorite literary hero. Or so advises Claire Fallon of The Huffington Post, who provides a witty Rorschach test which informs why they fall in love with the male characters that they do. She sets up her choices with the following explanation:
Over the years, I’ve giggled with friends over various fictional studs, but, just as in real life, we often disagreed as to which romantic figure reigned supreme. In high school, I was Miss Sarcastic, and Mr. Darcy did seem like the ultimate — a handsome foil for my sharp comments who would be won over by my spirit and sass. Other friends prized dark, brooding men, like Mr. Rochester, whose melancholy seemed to promise sensitivity, an artistic nature, or a painful secret (in this case the last, unfortunately, but they can’t all be winners). Some women preferred carefree rogues who represented freedom and fun. And more often than not, our tastes in fictional men seemed to say far more about our true natures than we realized.
I recognize all those that Fallon has chosen from the classics. Some of the others are unfamiliar:
Gilbert Blythe (Anne of Green Gables)
Laurie (Little Women)
Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)
Mr. Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)
Benedick (Much Ado about Nothing)
Four (Divergent)
Mr. Knightley (Emma)
Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)
Dean Moriarty (On the Road)
Rochester (Jane Eyre)
Levin (Anna Karenina)
Patrick Bateman (American Psycho)
Edmond Dantes (Count of Monte Cristo)
Uncas (Last of the Mohicans)
Rhett Butler (Gone with the Wind)
Will Ladislaw (Middlemarch)
Aragorn (Lord of the Rings)
John the Savage (Brave New World)
Edward Cullen (Twilight)
Caspar Goodwood (Portrait of a Lady)
Jaime Lannister (Song of Ice and Fire)
It’s a good list for the most part although why any woman would choose Heathcliff is beyond me. (Then again, two female characters do.) Here’s Fallon’s explanation:
You’re drawn to troubled, even dangerous men — maybe it’s just your fear of boredom, maybe it’s a secret desire to be the woman he would reform himself for, but probably it’s a little bit of both. But whether he reforms or not, you’d rather risk his unpredictable moods than trudge through a dull routine with a more stable guy. Anyway, what’s more romantic than a man’s love for you driving him half insane?
I’m really impressed with the inclusion of Will Ladislaw, who has always been a favorite of mine. But I like even better the woman he marries, Dorothea Brooke, which gave me the idea to make up a list comprised of my favorites among the female partners. What emerges is an even stronger list:
Dorothea Brooks
Jo March
Elizabeth Bennet
Scout Finch (we’re about to discover what she’s like when she grows up)
Jane Eyre
Kitty Levin
Cora Munro (a fitting partner for Uncas)
Isabel Archer
Catherine Heathcliff II (but not her mother)
If one were allowed to keep the author but make substitutions, I would choose
Viola over Beatrice
Anne Elliot over Emma
Eowyn over Arwen
Who would you add?
