How Do I Love Thee?
Read How Do I Love Thee? Online
Authors: Valerie Parv (ed)
H
OW
D
O
I L
OVE
T
HEE
?
…
OW
D
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I L
OVE
T
HEE
?
Stories to stir the heart
…
E
DITED
B
Y
VALERIE PARV
First published in 2009
Copyright © Valerie Parv 2009
Copyright of individual stories remains with the authors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
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(the Act) allows a
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is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for
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CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
No matter whose name is on the cover, no book is ever the progeny of an individual. Behind the scenes there is always a dedicated group of specialists making sure we authors look as brilliant as we dream of being. This book owes much to the foresight and friendship of Annette Barlow, publisher at Allen & Unwin (how many books have we done together now?); the hard work of her skilled and unfailingly pleasant team (I’m looking at you, Alexandra Nahlous); the equally hard work of my agent, Linda Tate of The Tate Gallery; and, of course, the passion and talents of the wonderful contributors who would undoubtedly have a long list of acknowledgements of their own. Reading each
of their stories as it came in was like unwrapping a supply of presents, each one more exciting than the last. You guys are the best and it’s a privilege to have the chance to work with you all. How soon can we do this again?
Valerie Parv
ONTENTS
Ann Charlton
L
OOKING FOR
M
R
A
VPR1A
Anne-Maree Britton
S
OME
K
IND OF
H
APPINESS
Judy Neumann
N
IGHT OF THE
S
UPERHEROES
NTRODUCTION
L
OVE
B
ROUGHT TO A
C
OUNT
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
Romance has been likened to addiction by some psychologists, who regard love as a kind of oxytocin-fuelled temporary insanity, cured by long proximity to the beloved. According to this theory, when the spark inevitably wears off, we settle down to comfortable, if boring, companionship for however long the relationship lasts.
Having published more than fifty romance novels in twenty-six languages, and a great many short stories with romantic themes, I see romantic love as exciting and fulfilling, provided you’re prepared to work at it.
We wouldn’t expect a career to flourish without effort, study, regular appraisals, team-bonding sessions, time away to nourish the self, and persistence when the going gets tough. Why, then, should we assume that our most vital personal relationship requires a once-only commitment, and will maintain itself till death do us part?
After debating the issue with a romance-doubting psychologist on national television a few years ago, I wrote a book showing that you
can
have a love like those in my novels. This was
I’ll Have What She’s Having
(Random House, 1997). The desire of many couples to have what the heroes and heroines enjoy in romantic novels proved to be a strong selling point, not least to the book’s editor, Jennifer Byrne. I’m told that many men bought the book, seeking to answer the age-old question of what women want.
The ways I describe to keep romance flourishing are similar to those for career-building, including arranging team-bonding sessions and time-outs; being persistent in adversity; and regularly appraising how you’re doing as a couple. I know the methods work because they underpinned my own marriage for nearly thirty-eight years until death
did
part Paul and me in 2008.
So when asked to compile this anthology of romantic short stories, it’s hardly surprising that I chose as a theme Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous sonnet, ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways …’ Her words speak directly to my own ideas about love, not only as powerful enough to endure after death ‘if God choose’, but as an ideal worth striving for ‘to the depth and breadth and height/My soul can reach’. There are no guarantees that everything will go smoothly because we are ‘feeling out of sight/For the ends of Being and ideal Grace’.
Browning agrees that love is not all heart-stirring moments, either, but includes times spent quietly ‘by sun and candle-light’. The poet also acknowledges one of love’s greatest truths—that it must be unconditional to be worth anything. ‘I love thee freely, as men strive for Right’, I take to mean giving one’s love, not for reward or to bring the beloved to heel, but because it is the right thing to do. Paul was much better at this than me, but it’s still an ideal worth striving
for. Love is also pure, ‘as they [men] turn from Praise’. The satisfaction of giving from the heart, without thought of return, is its own highest and best reward.
According to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, love is not only an ideal, but a way of living. It is ‘passion put to use’; turning ‘old griefs’ and ‘a love I seemed to lose/With my lost saints’ into a relationship that restores her faith in love. She also makes the point that real love endures through the ups and downs, ‘the breath/Smiles, tears, of all my life!’.
Whether Browning was writing about her deep love for her husband, Robert Browning, a more spiritual love for God, as has been speculated over the years, or a universal love for humanity, she sums up the challenges and joys of love as no other poet has done.
Had she lived in the present day, Browning may well have been a romance writer. As in the conventions of romance novels, the sonnet form she uses is subservient to the emotions she pours out. The words scan effortlessly, so we notice first the power of her sentiments, and the discipline of the poetic form secondarily. Romance writers are often accused of writing to a mythical formula, but there also the form is secondary to the emotions we share with readers.
Browning’s own experience of romantic love and loss shines through her words. The eldest of twelve children, Elizabeth was educated at home, reading the works of Milton
and Shakespeare before she was ten. She had written her first epic poem before she was twelve—which I echoed with my own first publication in
The Australian Women’s Weekly
at the age of fourteen. In 1828, Elizabeth’s mother died and the family moved to Devon, then back to London where Elizabeth continued to study, write and publish while living under her father’s tyrannical rule. Plagued by illness all her life, she spent a year in Torquay by the sea, accompanied by her beloved brother, Edward, whom she called ‘Bro’. He drowned in a sailing accident at Torquay, and a heartbroken Elizabeth returned home to spend the next five years in seclusion, although she continued writing and publishing.
A volume entitled simply
Poems
, was published in 1844, and she received a letter from another poet, Robert Browning, praising her work. The two met that summer and began a clandestine courtship, exchanging more than five hundred letters over the subsequent months. Elizabeth’s father bitterly opposed the relationship, not wanting any of his children to marry.