10 Classical Romance Books
by kalyani10
Romance as a literary genre has had a long and complex history. At the outset of its evolution in medieval times, it dramatized serious moral and political issues through its allegory as well as psychological and theological complexities through its symbolism; around this time, it was a place of knights, dragons, quests, magic, spells, wizards, heroic deeds and idealized love. With the advent of advent of the bourgeois mode of realism in eighteenth century novel, romance lost much of its appeal and began to seem out-dated. However the excessive materialism and realism of modern age brought back the charm of romance mainly in two subgenres, the Gothic novel and the historical novel. Today romance is generally associated with the strange and mysterious, the adventurous, with the lure of foreign lands, with something slightly magical, with a story which refuses to be tied to realist notions and explores phenomena which are unusual, allegorical and symbolic. Here are then ten classic romance novels which have enthralled generations of readers and inspired as many lovers.
- Wuthering Heights
At the outset, Emily Bronte’s forceful treatment of love over two generations and in its varied psychological manifestations seems to have all the makings of a Gothic novel, ranging from a desolate setting and wild elements to forbidden love and the ant-hero, Heathcliff. But Wuthering Heights is much more than a Gothic horror and turns out to be a psychological thriller as well as a forceful treatment of the cultural-political pressures of the time. Heathcliff for instance, is a dark foreigner and hence culturally the other, that against which we define and defend our humanity and civilized state, he a man with no parentage, a waif from the slums of Europe; and he is a figuring-forth of the force and terror of evil and of the irrational, a force of energy without civility. He is inexplicable but compelling because he sums the fears of the time. Above all as a romance it deals with the love between Heathcliff and Catherine, a love transcends the boundaries between life and death and functions on several symbolic levels.
- Mansfield Park
At the outset, the plot of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen seems more suited to a comedy of errors rather than grand romance. The book is about Fanny Price, a poor girl who is taken in by a rich family. She falls in love with her cousin Edward, but there is someone in her way. He is in love with a charming woman who might not be suited to be a Vicar's wife. And yet Romance is at the root of both the comedy and the drama in this book since most of the major plot threads and themes are related to romance in some shape or form like marriage, falling in love, flirtation and unrequited love. in fact like Gothic romances of the time Mansfield Park is rife with adultery, betrayal, social ruin, and ruptured friendships.. and yet for all the success of contemporary Gothic potboilers such as Ann Ward Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Jane Austen never got carried away by romance in her own novels – in her novels marriage is first and foremost a social contract. and no matter how charming, gifted, and attractive her characters are, they are in trouble, if they lack in one essential Austenian quality: principle. Without good principles to temper passion, the results can be disastrous and with it, even the most insipid character like Fanny can be elevated to the level of a heroine.
- Ivanhoe
Sir Walter Scott wrote many romance novels in which the past functions as more than a setting for the grand adventures, the Scottish nation and Lords and peasants; in Scott’s historical romance, the past is as much a source of value and meaning, that place where life was more concrete, vivid, adventuresome and, well, 'romantic'. In keeping with these traits, Ivanhoe functions as a classic historical romance with its conflict between the good and evil embodied in the heroes and villains, the perilous journey of the main character, his individual struggle, passage through ritual death, his rescue of the endangered maiden and ending with the promise of general happiness in a future improved social order. However closer readings of Ivanhoe show that Walter Scott had begun to incorporate many traits of the realistic novel – for example his heroes are far from ideal, the maiden is saved more by chance than valor and the final political arrangement falls far short of the ideal socio-political order. in this way Scott’s synthesis of more realistic elements into the conventional romance form qualifies his romance novels and elevates his literary worth.
- Jane Eyre
One of the most beloved romantic novels of all times, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte incorporates many elements of romance - the windswept locales, the brooding mansion which hides dark secrets and its equally Byronic owner Mr. Rochester, the throbbing passions of the protagonists and in the end true love overcoming spatial distance. Besides romance, Jane Eyre also includes elements such as coming-of-age story, the roman à clef and Gothic horrors. at the same time, it also engages, though not always directly, with issues of class, gender and race – in fact classics of post-colonial feminist writing like Wild Sargasso Sea and Madwoman in the Attic have unmistakable references to Jane Eyre. Despite all its complexity, though, the heart and soul of Jane Eyre is the passionate love between Jane and her employer, Edward Rochester, and it's their love story that is the most memorable element of the novel.
- The Last of the Mohicans
Romance novels are not always set in castles and dungeons – many of the typical themes of romance like a grand adventure set in distant times, fight between good and evil as well as rescue of maidens symbolizing the rescue of purity by principles of good from the clutches of evil are to be found in novels like The Last of the Mohicans which is today regarded as a classic frontier novel. The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas become embroiled in the bloody battles of the French and Indian War. The abduction of the beautiful Munro sisters by hostile savages, the treachery of the renegade brave Magua, the ambush of innocent settlers, and the thrilling events that lead to the final tragic confrontation between rival war parties are all staples of romance but which here create an unforgettable, spine-tingling picture of life on the frontier. And as the idyllic wilderness gives way to the forces of civilization, the novel also presents a moving portrayal of a vanishing race and the end of its way of life in the great American forests.
- The Scarlet Letter
American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne defined the romance as opposed to the novel as a place of more mystery, less specific description of concrete reality, a place where both elemental and spiritual forces come into play in a landscape that is full of symbolic, almost allegorical, potential. In keeping with these ideas, Hawthorne set his most famous romance, The Scarlet Letter in a distance place where different rules and moral conventions apply. The story unfolds in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston and tells the tale of an adulterous entanglement that results in an illegitimate birth. The novel reveals Nathaniel Hawthorne's concerns with the tension between the public and the private selves. Publicly disgraced and ostracized, Hester Prynne draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge as the first true heroine of American fiction.
- Mysteries of Udolpho
Some of the most popular works of the typical eighteenth century Gothic romance came from the pen of Ann Radcliffe, especially her novel series The Mysteries of Udolpho. this describes the emotional turbulence of an orphan Emily St. Aubert, who finds herself separated from the man she loves and confined within the medieval castle of her aunt's new husband, Montoni. Inside the castle, she must cope with an unwanted suitor, Montoni's threats, and the wild imaginings and terrors that threaten to overwhelm her. While such plot, characterization and setting seems highly melodramatic to modern day readers, in her time, Ann Radcliffe’s novels were what is today known as best-sellers.
- The English Patient
Haunting and harrowing, as beautiful as it is disturbing, The English Patient tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery during the last days of the Second World War. The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burn victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning. The context of the Second World War, the sweeping geographic locales, the presence of exotic, the symbolism of love on various levels all make it an unforgettable romance. but like all classic literature, it rises above its immediate generic boundaries and also explores issues like race, alienation, sexuality, the horrors and the meaninglessness of war. In lyrical prose Michael Ondaatje weaves all the characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen in a literary feat which won him the Booker Prize in 1992.
- Phantom of the Opera
While Phantom of the Opera is better known now as a Broadway musical directed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, it is originally a French romance novel written by Gaston Leroux. Influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne, Leroux's writing is marked by an eclectic mix of mystery, horror, Gothic romance, fantasy, and action. He weaves all of these styles into the Phantom of the Opera which tells the story a young singer named Christine who falls prey to the temptations of a ghoul, Erik who has been trapped in a Parisian opera house. Forgetting her human lover Raoul, Christine offers herself completely to the ghoul in a manner which makes her subservience to him almost erotic. The story is a classic romance of unrequited love cast in a beauty versus the beast narrative, but the dark underbelly of this love is profoundly tragic because of Erik's ghastly appearance. And even as the phantom is an archetypal ghoul, yet he also carries a Jekyll and Hyde duality because he represents both the passionate and beautiful and horrible and evil in everyone. For every loving stroke of tender feeling he conveys to Christine, he couples it with another stroke of pure menace toward another. The love triangle that forms here between Raul, Christine, and Erik has also been copied numerous times, and the literal depths Erik will travel to express his love for Christine is truly profound.
- Gone with the Wind
Yet another romance novel in which the war acts as a backdrop is Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. A sweeping historical romance, the novel follows beautiful feisty Scarlett O’Hara, roguish Rhett Butler and romantic, infinitely good-looking Ashley Wilkes as the world that nurtured them is swept away in the cataclysm of the American Civil War. As quintessentially American as Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is English, Gone with the Wind has many of the staples of romance novel like larger than life hero, forbidden love, wide ranging time scales, brimming passions as well as a host of sub-plots. however its appeal and continuing popularity depends on something far deeper since in the end, Gone with the Wind is the definitive telling of one of the basic American mythologies: the passing away, in blood and ashes, of the grand old South.
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