So today is Valentine's Day, as if you hadn't had enough difficulty averting your eyes from the onslaught of advertisements, and this year apparently an incessant need for everyone to tell us all how 'Ben and Jerry are the only men for me' via every social media network. I won't apologise for enlightening you with the fact that it is the 14th February, because I'm going to share the most wonderful protestations of love through the written word. A written note is a gesture that I would find far more romantic than roses, chocolates, the generic Clinton Cards bear that you won't know what to do with when the giver is no longer in your life. Sorry, but it's true. Whereas on a practical basis you could just burn the written note or wallow in your pain like a romantic heroine rather than having deranged thoughts about mutilating said bear.
Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, The Great Gatsby are all seen to be beautiful love stories, but for me they don't offer the same kind of requited and perfect love that Austen presents. So my favourite romantic passage has to be:
Jane Austen, Persuasion.
“I
can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are
within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not
that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer
myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke
it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than
woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I
may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone
have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen
this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these
ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated
mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers
me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when
they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us
justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy
among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.
I
must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party,
as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter
your father's house this evening or never.”
On my list of books to read recreationally this year is Lolita, Love in the time of Cholera, Atonement amongst many more. So who knows, maybe this will all change by next year. However at the moment, some of the words expressed by Austen's characters remain unsurpassed, in my mind, in terms of idyllic love.
With that in mind if you don't receive anything this Valentines Day, or even if you do, I think you should treat yourself to this mug.
...how ardently I admire and love you' (Darcy, Pride and Prejudice)
I would argue that it's everything you could want out of a relationship: romance and a warming beverage, principally tea, to cuddle up with on the sofa.
Happy Valentine's Day everyone!
