Romantic Fiction, Reality Shaping and The Work

[Martina]

I finished "The Proposal", Mary Balogh's book, when I started the book, I felt a bit lost to the reading at first, I don't know why, maybe I didn't feel anything familiar with the reading, and the way the main characters to found each other, so easy, for the first time, made me lose interest a little bit, I continued and as I advanced a quarter of the book I identified a bit and felt some features of the main characters.
At first it struck me that between the previous novel I finished by Jennifer Ashley (Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage) and this one, both characters suffered an abortion, approached in different ways. It's a very sad experience, painful, I had a miscarriage in my second month of pregnancy this past summer, The embryo did not grow for more than a month, the nurse when performing the second ultrasound the first thing she told me was that it was not my fault, that she had had two before she became pregnant.
Looking at both novels, I understand of course that it is fiction, but it has made me think about when the relationship is not very well established or there is something that does not work very well in the woman or the relationship can perhaps influence the development of that little life in the womb. I must admit that when I found out I was pregnant I was scared and a little angry because I felt that it was not a good time personally or I did not feel ready to go through the whole process of having a child again.

Sorry for your loss jess. I used to have a nightmares that I am pregnant during some apocalypse and then I realize that's what I've actually went through, but sometimes you have to stay positive and focus only on good things and later the truth can completely slam you. At least it was with me that reading romantic novels worked like taking off the buffers, as Gurdjieff calls it ( lack of oxigen because of masks makes me forget if I wrote that somewhere or not).
You'll be ok, and you're still young you can still have children if you wish so. Big hugs.

 

[jess]

I am terribly sorry for you! It must be a traumatic ordeal!

What you say reminds me of part of Eloisa James' book "Midnight Pleasures".
It is not the "happiest" of books in my opinion, and I would not recommend it if the reader's morale is not good.

Spoiler

The heroine blames herself for her miscarriage because she partly regretted being pregnant for fear of losing the man she loved.

Hi trytofly, it is a strong experience, at that time I was going through a lot of stress, I feel that I was very selfish to think at first that I would not be able with a second child, having so many things to solve and the social situation that is lived now. Everything happened to me in a natural way, it happened to my mother too, she had two abortions in her 20s, I don't think it was traumatic, I think time helps to process, understand and heal. I think talking to my mother about it gave me comfort and support.
I hope this comment doesn't make any noise, I just found it quite curious that the two books in a row I was reading the female characters had a miscarriage.

 

[jess]

Sorry for your loss jess. I used to have a nightmares that I am pregnant during some apocalypse and then I realize that's what I've actually went through, but sometimes you have to stay positive and focus only on good things and later the truth can completely slam you. At least it was with me that reading romantic novels worked like taking off the buffers, as Gurdjieff calls it ( lack of oxigen because of masks makes me forget if I wrote that somewhere or not).
You'll be ok, and you're still young you can still have children if you wish so. Big hugs.

Thank you Martina, an apology, I hope this comment doesn't make noise , which is not my intention at all. Maybe this is also part of being a woman, it can happen, it is a possibility, I'm grateful because with my first daughter everything was perfect even though I was 37 years old, if it happened to my mother too, I could think that maybe it could be genetic, I don't know, I feel lucky to know the good side and a little bit also the bad side, how could I then know how valuable life is, children.

 

[Rolae]

Having finish this book a few days ago. From what I remember. What I noticed about Miss Wren is that she knew what she wanted despite the challenges of getting to know a stranger( Alexander) before he understood Miss Wren Heyden. Don't know if this is due to a female intuition or both her loneliness begets to know herself well. While males are usually more instinctive. Miss Heyden accedental position in life which eventually she came to owned as an adaptive measure due to her birthmark; major insecurity made her to be a recluse and if she had friends growing up I'm sure there was social involuntary difference amongst her peers, reinforcing her outlook on life including the Mother not being in her life that "person" being a self absorbed narcissist to put lightly.The stigma for Heyden was an external reminder that kept her closer to herself and in such as she was, knew herself more than most. I think the story really does revolves around Wren as the man she picked to be her husband could have fitted to be anyother man. Except, that Alexander, does have character genuiness! And his challenge was to see beyond the mere ploys of money and looks and status in a woman to be with the right female in marriage. In this case. A honesty and nobleness seems natural to Alexander but was not so much expressed in "Someone to Wed". I didn't agree with the comparison of money and love, money does not begets love. This story is not a tale about love at first sight. As heart to heart, differences, growing up in Wren case, courage ,uncertainty , accepting oneself, and learning to grow to love or learned love, this is challenging commitment that can mature with love. Nonetheless, not love at first sight. Learning to love the one your with. It's a heavy responsibility on Alexander part. I could assume he knew this with his intelligence, one can be in his corner for doing this, but with young beginnings they know not what's ahead, but happy wishes'. In the relationship between mother and daughter, conveyed in the story. I am projecting or reading too much into this a incarnating awareness, so it's theory,, that the dynamic between the two is like a splitting off from a soul/family history or mindset disability that caused a symbolic physical aliment of the face out in the open and not without the emotional struggle that goes along with it in the daughter. Metamorphosis. In which somewhere in the soul family choice to graduate from the (lesser mind of subjective and self-centered experiencing a entropic inner scar, in this case the mother side of the family passing into the transitioning with the daughter of newer mind family continuance of greater soul potential. Viola has real friendship and healthy advice.

 

[Redrock12]

Just finished Only Beloved, the last book of The Survivors series. The part where Dora is describing what happened to her and Agnes when her mother left hit me like a ton of bricks. A similar occurrence in my own life happened when I left my eleven y/o daughter in the care of my parents in Saskatchewan and took off back to BC. She was devastated. At the time I thought she would understand. My thinking at the time was it was necessary because I didn't see how I could possibly hold down a job and give her the necessary care and attention she needed. There were other factors involved in that decision as well, including an absent mother into feminism who thought It was time that I should take on the role of single parenting while she embarked on her new-found freedom.
Nevertheless, Dora's description of what she and Agnes went thru forced me to confront my own lack of responsibility and self-centeredness in abdicating my parental responsibility to my parents. My daughter was devastated. Although there was an initial reconciliation with my daughter, she still carried the hurt and resentment over the years until now she longer wants anything to do with me, I guess there were options available but in reality I wss focussed on myself and justifying my own irresponsible behavior, at my daughter's expense. I guess the upside is that I never blamed her for her mother's or mine immature and selfish behavior. And I always encouraged her in her endeavors. She never got into drugs or got pregnant, did well scholastically, and today has a good job with the BC government, has a partner with a successful career in, I think, software development and thinks the world of her.
It hurts to even write this, but this is what this project is all about.Talk about mirroring! Thank you for this project Laura.
I'll open a new reply to cover Only Beloved more thoroughly.

 

[Voyageur]

I am projecting or reading too much into this a incarnating awareness, so it's theory,, that the dynamic between the two is like a splitting off from a soul/family history or mindset disability that caused a symbolic physical aliment of the face out in the open and not without the emotional struggle that goes along with it in the daughter.

Perhaps best wait and see as the characters (Wren in this case and Alexander) further develop in other books as deeper family matters are revealed to help encompass that development.

 

[Rolae]

Yes, makes sense. Thank you. Yet I was referring to mother daughter not Wren and Alex

 

[Rolae]

By the way I will say this and not care how I'm viewed by others. Nor if I'm banned from this fluid multi-level knowledge based website. If this is your way of nudging me into conversation because supposed read of my comment in how you supposed to have read correctly given your a internet ambassador. I will not being having a conversation with vast majority of internet profiles here. Now, one may think this guy is to suspicious and has assumptions. Yes true However, I viewed the feeding dynamics here and it's not too far a meter from too much exposing and deliberate brain picking into reaction base subtle nudging of how to get into a person mindset. Now, I have a different perspective on human beings and the dynamics of hyperdimensional reality. Given this being said many have been systematically plagerized in mind informational profile to which the desperation of these dark enitiies(parasites) seek to capture more and control through a technology or other dead dudes seek and find and emulate others unsuspecting even suspecting and they have clever ways of doing so. Especially during these times where reality are merging and the devil next door is closer by then one can imagine . Not to raise an alarm You see I'll say this because it's pertinent to say this. No one else will, whom may have an inkling. You see people here share way too much personal about themselves over the years and unless ones has a group of enlightened and smart folks best not say much but the what can be said enough including and especially all over the internet. I may have accused you wrongly. Fare enough my apology. And fare fare. No self-pity!

 

[Voyageur]

Yes, makes sense. Thank you. Yet I was referring to mother daughter not Wren and Alex

A few books ahead the mother factors, as does her story.

 

[Voyageur]

I finished "Untouched" from Annie Campbell. Not the best book to read during the Christmas season.

Just at Christmas, had finished Balogh's Someone to Trust, and oh such a good part of the book took place at Christmas, with family. Many things were brought up that were warming.

One thing seems sure: the more we learn about the ways we can hurt others or be hurt, the more we can learn about external considering and how not to hurt and be hurt.

So true.

Noted something in the same Balogh book as mentioned above, in the words of Elisabeth:

Yes..For we always do blame ourselves even when we know we are innocent. Instead of hording a secret sense of guilt, it is better to forgive ourselves. And to forgive the guilty one too, or at least recognize that except in very rare circumstances we were not victims of pure evil, only of wrongs done against us by people who were themselves hurting when they hurt us. I do not mean we must excuse these wrongs that were done to us, only that we must . . . understand why they were done and then forgive. We must do it for our own sakes. Resentment and hatred and grudges are a poison that harms the person who harbors them far more than it harms anyone else.

- Lady Elisabeth Overfield

 

[Voyageur]

By the way I will say this and not care how I'm viewed by others. Nor if I'm banned from this fluid multi-level knowledge based website. If this is your way of nudging me into conversation because supposed read of my comment in how you supposed to have read correctly given your a internet ambassador.

You mean "In the relationship between mother and daughter, conveyed in the story." Yes, Wren/mother, I got that, and apologize if referencing Alexander (husband) in association with Wren struck you as a wrong. Yet you are right, it was not accurately stated.

 

[Laura]

Rolae, your posts above are marginally better, though still somewhat incoherent. Perhaps if you would tell me your age and educational level, I could suggest a plan to make your writing more comprehensible to other people?

 

[ryu]

I started reading "Heartless" from Mary Balogh two days ago thinking I would read one or two chapter before going to bed.... I finished the book at 3:30 am. Anna has a pretty disturbing behaviour from the beginning and I felt a pit in my stomach imagining what could be the cause of it.

The two heros, Luke and Anna both suffered immensely and at the beginning they both think they are unable to love and be loved in return. I knew they would get their happy ending, otherwise I wouldn't have finished this book. Even if they think there's an hole where their heart should be, they are not the ones who are heartless.

IMO Mrs Balogh has overdone herself with this story, even if the Survivors serie is still my favourite.

The villains, on first appearance seem like honorable, good-hearted people. Only later do we discover that there is ice in their veins, that they lie, manipulate all the time others (and themselves). They are unable to see the wrong in what they do, it's never their fault. They are completly divorced with reality, that's one of the scariest thing about them. Mrs Balogh introduce us to their inner landscape and it made me want to crawl under my bed for the first time in 25+ years. I though several times, "they're not human".

Another thing that I felt disturbing in this story, and it is historically true: the class system that there was (is ?) in England. The worth of a human being, especially a woman, amounted to how much a man was willing to pay for her, and how much power one held in society.
It was always alluded to in the other books I read but it never appeared so starkly for me as in this story. In a sense, this book does a good job of showing how heartless the society was back then. It seems that all the positive things that Christianity, the Greek philosophers could bring was lost on them and all they could think of was "what's the latest fashion in Paris?"(I speak of the noble and upper-middle class who had the luxury of getting an education).

It made me reflect that the statement is still true today, where everyone gets access to education and free online ressources, but as a collective we more often than not do nothing with it. Today we lock up, isolate people, torture them psychologically, destroy their livelihood, put the health and future of children in jeopardy ect. And before that, we (at least the NATO countries) have let our armies go half across the world to spread chaos on innocent populations. We don't seem to have learned much as a collective. I'm not sure our ancestors would be pleased with us if they saw the mess we are in.

 

[iamthatis]

I personally find it very interesting how the stories in the novels set in the late 1800s or so, provide an approximation or historical perspective of the thinking of the "First Modernity", the place where that bourgeois class was born which established primarily the "first rules and values" of behavior of which we can see traces today. I find the sexual part of the novels very interesting, I find in it a greater richness when I read the story, it makes it more familiar and complete. Because if we think a little bit about other cultures and other times, only if we mention for example the Greek culture, the ideal of beauty was masculine, and even some men had the practice of having beautiful lovers; young men as something natural within their culture.

I have been thinking about the culture in these novels, those 'values and rules' you mentioned. In comparison to the world I grew up in, its highly regulated. The examples are legion. Unwed girls may not walk with a man alone. There is a specific Season of balls and garden parties which is in part designed to 'bring out' eligible young men and women for the purpose of finding mates. And of course, there are rules of esteem and honour that many times force a marriage to prevent some sort of scandal. And on and on.

There is a social standard that everyone in these books has to contend with - whether they like it or not. And whether they're a man or woman, old or young, these customs give their lives sense and meaning, something to push against or been drawn towards, to navigate, to discuss, ponder - something to live for. Although incredibly heartbreaking and difficult, as the authors in this thread display, it is these customs that form a sort of ground that the characters walk on in their lives.

When I was growing up through the teen years (or trying to, at least), there wasn't anything even remotely like this. So what follows is that many people of my generation have had to contend not with the necessary problem of standards, per se, but the bewildering state of an almost complete lack of any social standard - particularly when it came to dating, sex, finding a partner, and how a lifelong and loving relationship could be cultivated between two people. For many people born in the last 30 years, there has been no solid ground to stand on - no healthy culture to guide young minds towards good, lasting relationships.

I mean, when you're 16 years old, pumped full of hormones, discovering your sexuality for the first time and you know you can watch all the porn you want for free - what incentive is there to sit patiently and listen to an elderly Aunt to discuss potential brides, and how one must comport oneself to be worthy of one?

So in all of that, I see the cultural poverty of my (and our) historical moment. And in reading these books, I get a kick out of letting my imagination run - not just in terms of what a real relationship may be like, but also towards some sense of how life in a healthy culture would feel.

 

[PERLOU]

J'ai terminé " Le château des miroirs de la série Les fils du péché d'Anna Campbell "
C'est le livre qui m'a le moins plu sauf la fin qui est intéressante des sur les 10 que j'i déjà lus...
Je commence " La robe écarlate d'Anna Campbell "...

I have finished "The Castle of Mirrors from the Anna Campbell Sons of Sin series".
This is the book that I liked the least except the end which is interesting of the 10 I've already read...
I start "Anna Campbell's Scarlet Dress"...