Thinking Through Literature: What is romance?

In the begging stages of my relationship, my now serious partner asked “What is romance?” It struck me because it feels like such an obvious fact. Yet—its seeming obviousness made it difficult to define in that moment. I’ve been thinking about this question for a year now: What is Romance?

Romance is a set of reciprocal gestures hat slowly move two people closer to each other. A very typical example is sending someone flowers. Over my long, long life of 28 years I’ve gotten my fair share of flowers. The most memorable was when I received a flower arrangement on valentine’s day. It was a stunning arrangement of baby’s breath, daisies and stargazer lilies. Although I had received flowers before, this was the first time I had ever thought about the gift of flowers as a romantic gesture. Its romantic because for whatever reason, gifting a woman with flowers has become a part of the cultural script around romance. I do not know where or how or why this tradition began, I just know that by the time I received the flowers, I understood that it was a gestured of romance.

But after reading Bessie Head’s Maru and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera, the gesture suddenly felt flat and empty. Other than spending money on me, what made the gesture meaningful? So my first amendment to my initial working definition of romance would be this: Romance is a set of meaningful gestures that slowly move two people closer to each other.

Bessie Head tells us two things about romance: romance does not die after one gets married and that one gesture can remain for a life time. We often relegate romantic gestures to the beginning stages of a relationship. As the relationship grows and matures, the creativity of expressing ones feelings of affection seem to wither as time goes on. The opening pages of Bessie Head’s Maru immediately demonstrate what a continuous romantic gesture looks like. Maru is a pensive man who

“thought a thought and felt it immediately bound to the deep center of the earth, then bound back again to the center of his heart again —with a reply” (Head, 223).

This introducing sentence tells us that Maru is someone who lives in his head. He is not a man of charisma and sweet nothings. We do not see him say anything to his wife. Instead, readers get to read the following:

“he wanted a flower garden of yellow daises, because they were the only flowers which resemble the face of his wife and the sun of his love” (221).

Maru can easily buy a bouquet of flowers. But he chooses to till the soil, plant the flowers and then continue to care for them year after year. There is a particularity to this gesture: He does not plant roses, the traditional flower of love. He plants daisies because they remind him of his wife. It is a very quiet gesture: there are no flashy arraignments; no puny valentine’s day cards; no fancy vases with intricate swirls. Its gesture that is only meaningful to his wife and no one else.

When I think back on getting those flowers for valentine’s day, I remember going to the main office to pick them up. The women at the desk oohed- and ahhed that I got flowers – and it felt good! For those few minutes, I was given the most delicious (yet somehow empty) feeling of being the envy of the women in that room. Therein lies the rub: Looking back, what felt good is that other people knew I got flowers; not so much the gesture itself.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is another writer who attentively fleshes out the romance of giving someone flowers. In his Love in the Time of Cholera, flowers function as a shared language between Florentino Ariza and Fermina Dazza. In their first conversation, Florentiono is close enough that he can

“detect catches in her breathing and the flora scent that he would identify with her for the rest of his life” (Marquez, 70).

The first gesture of romance is to give to her a “flower of promise” a camellia (71). At the time that this book was written, the promise was obvious: marriage. The camellia functions in the same way a promise ring does, it is a clear sign of devotion and promises a future engagement.

Marriage is no longer the first step we take toward adulthood, It is now, the capstone of adulthood. Furthermore, the average age of getting married has shifted over from early 20’s to late 20’s-early 30’s. But the gesture of promise still has a place in developing a romance, even if it is not the promise of marriage. A promise is “a declaration, or an assurance that something will happen.” One can still promise.

In both my life, and these novels, I can’t help but notice that all these gestures are made by men. And traditionally, it is under the domain of men to make romantic gestures that cost money, because in a late capitalist society, the entrance into marriage is the demonstration of financial resources blah blah blah (I obviously have a liberal arts degree)

Personally, I like to believe that romantic gestures have always been under the domain of men because men are usually stereotyped as the less expressive gender. In other words, what these books teach us is that for some men, gifts or acts of service take the place of words to express affection. The point of a gesture is to show another person that you care without having to use words. It strikes me that the song “more than words”is a song written and performed by men. In the song the say

“what would you do if I took those words away?”

the romantic gesture says that words are superfluous, but a gesture, like planting flowers, and sending dried camellias over the course of 50 years is a much more powerful gesture that does not rely on words. And to be clear, both Maru and Florentino do not choose expensive gestures: they choose gestures that can be sustained and maintained for the long haul.

My current boyfriend has not given me flowers: thank the fuck god. He instead, will pick me up and drop me off to see a friend who lives in a town 20 minutes away. Every morning before he leaves to go rock climbing, he makes sure my phone is on the charger. And yes, in his own way, he has made the promise to me, that Florentino makes to Fermina.