My literary pet peeve: Abusive relationships that are glorified.
It didn't even register to me when I was younger, but as I've grown older this has become more and more troublesome to me. Who are the worst offenders imo:
1. Tolstoy- Anna Karenina is just rife with the dysfunction. It's hard for me to take the love story seriously because it just made me cringe the majority of the time.
2. Emily Bronte. Wuthering heights is a great example of a bad love story that is glorified to insane proportions. Kathy and Heathcliff are not a great love, they are not even a tortured love. They just don't belong together. They bring out he worst in each other. She's insufferable and He's a brooding asshole that needs to stay away from the female gender. His obsessive personality is also very off-putting.
3. The chick who wrote the Bronze Horsman. As I put in an earlier review, the relationship between Tania and pretty much everyone in her life is toxic and abusive to some extent. The physical violence that Alexander inflicts on her is not romantic. The parental abuse she suffers is not compelling. It's just a horrible message laced in OTT writing.
hmm I don't know that I think the relationship is glorified in AK, though I'm not finished with it yet. I think some readers may glorify it, but I don't think that's the authorial intent.
ReplyDeleteBut lol yes to the Bronze Horseman.