First Meetings

In the same way that Sherlock Holmes has become not just a classic, but a genre-inventing mega-classic, Pride and Prejudice is a genre-inventing mega-classic. The romance novels that have followed in the last two centuries follow the structure of Pride and Prejudice so carefully that it is a cliche. No other romantic novel has had this same power in terms of literature. Not Emma. Not my beloved Persuasion. Not Sense and Sensibility. Certainly not Northanger Abbey or Mansfield Park. I suppose you could argue that Wuthering Heights has spawned the paranormal/vampire romance genre. But if so, it would be a twisted genealogy. And Jane Eyre goes in and out with governness books of different kinds. But I think Pride and Prejudice is often still behind those.

The first meeting is the keystone of this genre. Think how often you groan when two romantic leads in a movie or a book meet each other and hate each other at first. It is done so often because it works. The funny repartee. (OK, yes, that owes something to Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew, if you want to go back further, but it's not the same first meeting kind of thing.) You know that the two leads are going to hate each other at first. The trick isn't to get out of the convention as a writer of romance, but to make it your own, to breathe fresh air into it somehow. I think we don't watch romantic movies or read romances because we want to avoid that cliche. We love it. We just want it to be done well--again. And then we want to see how it plays out in the rest of the novel. How is the writer going to get them to fall in love? Are we going to believe it?

I'm thinking of Notting Hill. First meeting: Hugh Grant spills coffee on Julia Roberts. He acts like an idiot. It seems to prove that they will never be able to have a real relationship because they are so different. The Runaway Bride--Richard Gere writes a horrible, nasty news column about Julia Roberts and then ends up having to get on her good side. First meeting of Cordelia and Aral? He shoots her lieutenant. How is he going to recover from that? Yet he does. First meeting in The Actor and the Housewife? Becky makes a fool of herself and is pregnant to boot. They are utter mistmatches. (OK, you might argue that doesn't as a romance, but it certainly is playing with the conventions). First meeting of Miles and Ekaterin in Komarr-she is married to someone else. How is that going to work? And what about Lancelot and Guinevere in Nancy McKenzie's Queen of Camelot--of course they have to hate each other. First meeting in Franny Billingsley's Folk Keeper? Does he know she is a boy or not?

And in my own The Princess and the Hound, the first meeting between George and Beatrice is quite cold. It seems difficult to imagine anyone could fall in love with that princess. But George does, and I think part of the strength in the story is that first meeting that goes badly. His expectations are all ruined, and he has to find out slowly as the reader does, what the reasons for her cold meeting of him are. Beauty and the Beast with the beast a woman? You could also say it's Pride and Prejudice with the roles reversed. She is Mr. Darcy.

I hope that I can do the same thing well in Tris and Izzie. In the original, Tristan does not make a good impression on Isolde. He kills her uncle and then lies to her about his name (because she would kill him otherwise). Yet they take the potion together and there are some versions in which she knows what she is doing.

Happy Valentine's Day #4