A Centuries-Old Obsession

August 6, 2023 9:28 AM

Despite our love of building community around uniting behind one love interest or the next, or our general consensus that one love interest is superior — no one likes Wickham over Darcy — some might say that our interest in love triangles might point to a wider cultural desire to explore polyamory. While I don’t doubt that many are curious about exploring options outside of the dominant form of monogamous relationships, I disagree that the classic love triangle is a good example of this. from The enduring allure of a good love triangle
posted by chavenet (43 comments total)

It's not much of a story if they just all agree what's what at the beginning, is it?
posted by kingdead at 10:48 AM on August 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

Not a big fan of love triangles as such. I usually support the guy who's the decent soul, the least insulting and murdery, a character who has traditionally lost out in romances until the past few years.

Also not a big fan of proposing polyamory as a "solution." It's a thing people want to do or don't. You can't duct tape people together. Go into a relationship forum on Reddit and see what happens.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:07 AM on August 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

> Go into a relationship forum on Reddit

noooooooooooope nope nope nope nope nooooooope nope nope

𝕟𝕠𝕡𝕖.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:13 AM on August 6, 2023 [38 favorites]

You can't duct tape people together.

It's true; Austen would've used oakum instead.
posted by mittens at 11:15 AM on August 6, 2023 [18 favorites]

Less of a triangle, more of a fork in the road, huh? Never really considered before how triangle isn't a great description for it. That trilogy sounds like a lot but what a useful vehicle for a tour.

I adore a nice figurative triangle where the reader is meant to identify with the poor soul who is cherished by multiple potential partners. (Ah, the fantasy of being wanted for one's whole self instead of mainly just one's physical assets! And by multiple people so you know it's not a fluke! The luxurious pain of having options!)

But are there any good books focusing on one of the romantic options, rather than the one choosing? I've never stepped into their shoes.

You can't duct tape people together.
A million soul-bond fics cry out in denial
posted by Baethan at 11:19 AM on August 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

There's a reading of romances that suggests that romances are really a love story between the reader and themself. That is: a lot of romances are about embracing the parts of yourself that you don't want to accept, the parts that make you think I want nothing to do with this guy! when you meet at the beginning of the story.

So - in that analysis - a love triangle is really about figuring out who you are: are you the person who embraces risk or the person who needs security? Are you the person who wants a quiet life or something more glamorous?

And I'm glad that there is increasingly more polyamory representation in genre romance! But also, I don't think a love triangle has to be about foreclosing on those kinds of options. It can be about self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-love.
posted by Jeanne at 11:36 AM on August 6, 2023 [18 favorites]

I can't even imagine two guys liking me at the same time when I can't even get one to. Literally the only time I know of anything like that happening in IRL is if you do polyamory.

Love triangles usually kinda go like this (and mostly it's ladies with two dudes, so).

(a) The Stephanie Plum: love triangle in which "s/he MUST DECIDE!" doesn't actually happen, it's all a fantasy that the lady can shag two gents and both gents are pretty well fine with it. Fans can argue for one guy versus the other, but overall, everyone's fine with this. Also see any books by Laurell K. Hamilton.

(b) The Twilight: one guy is obviously the One True Pairing, the other is a Disposable Love Interest. No point in rooting for #2 really, he's just there to stall the HEA for awhile. Also see...way too many books that do this.

(c) The Mercy Thompson: heroine has two love interests, eventually picks one, love triangle drama fades away. Also see: Bobbie Faye books, which nobody but me has heard of and that's a shame.

(d) The Lost: heroine has two love interests, both suck, who cares which one she picks, because they both suck. Also see: The Gardella Vampire Chronicles.

(e) The Typical: heroine vacillates back and forth between "S/HE MUST DECIDE!" for eternity, until people are freaking exhausted. Too many examples.

The Typical stuff is what makes love triangles annoying, basically.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:36 AM on August 6, 2023 [25 favorites]

You can't have your Kate and Edith, too
posted by jazon at 12:05 PM on August 6, 2023 [31 favorites]

The folks over at Overly Sarcastic Productions did a Trope Talk on love triangles and how they wind up working in media (including a taxonomy you might find interesting, jenfullmoon.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:22 PM on August 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Lucy in Dracula:

Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it.
posted by doctornemo at 1:36 PM on August 6, 2023 [14 favorites]

I think the basic problem with this is that a love triangle doesn't point toward polyamory at all. The choice is the key; it's not like Ms. Bennett wanted Darcy and Wickham, in fact, Wickham was the bad choice, and a very obviously bad choice by midway through the novel. The tension is whether Darcy is the good choice (since, after all, it was one of the few choices Ms. Bennett would get, and, if she got it wrong, like her sister, well...). Even by the end of the piece, the author remains unconvinced by her own premise. She just sounds kind of depressed by the weirdness The Summer I Turned Pretty inflicts on it's main character.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:29 PM on August 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Why can’t they let a girl marry three men...

Dear reader, that is a vision of hell on earth. Reality means one is about 2/3 more than enough husband.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:46 PM on August 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

Dear reader, I married him her them all of them oh hell, maybe being single is a good thing?
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:52 PM on August 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

In this as in so much else Sinnéad O'Connor is a true pioneer.

She evidently had four children by four different fathers, only one of whom she ever married, and I think if women were free of all male violence, threats of violence, and all other forms of coercion (especially economic), many if not most would go from man to man as their fancy moved them — and then probably choose the fathers of their children from one of the many celebrity sperm banks which would be flourishing under such a regime.

Not a world I would find any traction in, but so what?
posted by jamjam at 3:13 PM on August 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

It's not much of a story if they just all agree what's what at the beginning, is it?

Very few romance novels feature love triangles. The reader almost always knows from the get-go who is going to end up together. The tension has to do with how that's going to happen: there are obstacles, which usually are internal to the characters, and the characters have to evolve and grow so they can overcome the obstacles and end up together. That's what's going on with Pride and Prejudice. It's not a novel about Elizabeth Bennet choosing between two guys. It's about Elizabeth overcoming her prejudice and Darcy overcoming his pride, so they can end up together. And that, the mutual character development leading to a romantic resolution that feels earned, not the apparent love triangle, is what makes the book a foundational romance novel.

I dunno. I usually don't like love triangles. It often ends up with weak character development, since the drama comes from one person choosing, not from two people figuring out how to sustain a relationship. And these days, if you want a romance novel with a resolution that involves polyamory, you can find ones that do that explicitly.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:35 PM on August 6, 2023 [16 favorites]

Pride & Prejudice uses the Much Ado About Nothing romantic formula where the (grumpy*) A-plot couple are actually fairly well-suited for each other but get off on the wrong foot initially and can't stand each other, while the (sunshine) B-plot couple are into each other from the start but get Torn Apart By Circumstances

(personally I'm a huge sucker for this one)

I'd agree that it's not a triangle as much as, Wickham represents a temptation to Lizzie to accept all of his false truths and maintain her current flawed worldview, and in overcoming this challenge she grows as a person, transforming herself into a person who is ready for a mature relationship with Darcy -- while at the same time he's undergoing a parallel journey to grow into a person who is worthy of her, ugh I love it, put it in my veins

* I'm using "grumpy/sunshine" as a little bit of a tongue in cheek reference to shipping tropes, yes these characters are way more complex than simply being grumpy, but like how long does this comment need to be
posted by taquito sunrise at 5:13 PM on August 6, 2023 [22 favorites]

My introduction to P&P was through the BBC miniseries in college. I came in late and my roommates were already at the point where Wickham enters the story. At that point, having zero prior knowledge, I 100% believed it was a love triangle and spent the next couple hours agonising over which one she should choose. When I subsequently read the book - and watched the bit of the show I’d missed - I realised that it was obvious that Darcy was the OTP (almost to the extent that it felt like a spoiler). Wickham was a speed bump, a catalyst to both of them growing as people. So maybe a triangle is just down to a matter of perspective? (I mean, technically COLLINS is the one she actually turned down. 😂)
posted by web-goddess at 5:39 PM on August 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

One notable exception is Outlander, where Claire rejects the love of her serious dark-haired academic husband Frank, going back in time to 18th-century Scotland and falling in love with the younger, red-haired, mischievous Jamie Fraser.
That's not quite how I remember things. Claire had already well and truly fallen out of love with Frank when she first journeyed back to ye olde Scotland and bumped into Jamie. I guess she rejected Frank in the sense that she didn't return to him because she'd fallen for Jamie (as did my wife and every female I know who watched the series) and only returned when her and her unborn baby's life was in peril. She did reject him later to return to Jamie, though.

In many ways, it really was the archetypical triangle, with Claire torn between the safe, dependable (but boring) Frank and the sexy, exciting (but dangerous) Jamie who also felt like her One True Love. I definitely don't see Outlander as an exception to the traditional FMM love triangle.
posted by dg at 7:17 PM on August 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am 56 years old, and have known a lot of weirdos over my life, and not one person who decided to "explore polyamory" had anything other than a real bad time. Either the fallout wrecked their and/or their families' lives in really significant ways, or they transformed into (or evolved into, Pokemon style) the kind of cult leader toxic narcissist who enjoyed wrecking lives. I'm sure there are people out there who it worked for, but I've never met a single one.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:46 PM on August 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

Small bit of Austen pedantry re this bit “Elizabeth Bennett chooses the shy and wealthy Mr. Darcy over the charming adulterer Mr. Wickham, Emma chooses the honest Mr. Knightley over the shallow Frank Churchill”

Elizabeth doesn’t reject Wickham as insinuated here, he takes himself off the market before she understands his true character (though she does later get the chance to kind of symbolically reject him). Similarly Emma doesn’t reject Churchill, it’s revealed he was never available. As someone pointed out upthread it’s Mr Collins that Miss Bennet rejects and, likewise, Mr Elton who is rejected by Miss Woodhouse.

Also would like to give a shout out to the Amelia Sedley / Osbourne / Dobbin love triangle in Vanity Fair.
posted by tomp at 10:09 PM on August 6, 2023 [11 favorites]

Am I mis-remembering the books or should there be an (f) for the Sookie Stackhouse; who at one time was juggling confederate vampire Bill, undying viking Eric Northman, and Cajun werewolf Alcide?

Several popular media tropes combine to make a useful shorthand out of 'so this new guy - werewolf boyfriend or vampire boyfriend?'

A lot like the boy's version: Betty or Veronica? Archie Comics were never about Archie; they were about the eternal struggle, the existential choice, between Betty and Veronica.
posted by bartleby at 11:01 PM on August 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

I’m a librarian and polyamorous (it’s working just fine, thanks, we had brunch at my husband’s gf’s house yesterday), and most characters in love triangles in fiction, in my estimation, don’t have the self-knowledge and communication skills to make polyamory work even if they wanted to, which they usually don’t. More relationships means more work, and the center of a love triangle usually isn’t up for that. (Neither are a lot of people that dip their toes into polyamory, which is why the Reddit forums are a relationship graveyard; there are decaying skeletons of possibility everywhere.)
posted by vim876 at 3:59 AM on August 7, 2023 [19 favorites]

> ...cult leader toxic narcissist who enjoyed wrecking lives. I'm sure there are people out there who it worked for, but I've never met a single one.

Haven't chatted with many poly folk either.

However.

Maybe we should be careful that we're not saying callous or contemptuous things about real world polyamorous folk? Even if we've 'never met a single one'.

(In the same way that mefites have decided it's not really compassionate to speak ill of other varieties of queer folk. Even if we've 'never met a single one'.)
posted by sebastienbailard at 4:46 AM on August 7, 2023 [12 favorites]

Probably ESPECIALLY if we've never met a single one.

"I usually support the guy who's the decent soul, the least insulting and murdery, a character who has traditionally lost out in romances until the past few years."

Personally I always liked to pretend that those few moments on "Felicity" when Noel went full-Nice Guy weren't canon, and he was still the right choice over Ben.
posted by mellow seas at 5:19 AM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Triangulation is a much broader human dynamic; it's present in all relationships, not just the sexual/partnering realm. And love triangles are a type of triangulation more than an interest in polyamory. But it's a creative and thought-provoking take (from the quoted paragraph, haven't read the full article).
posted by interbeing at 5:27 AM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sookie waltzes past love triangle into reverse harem territory.

I like a nice fantasy or adventure story that happens to have some reverse harem going on. When well done, as the reader you fall in love with her as much as her followers do. It's not really about having to choose (maybe bc of genre?) more of a natural consequence of the main character's development. Good-natured but weak & naive princess transforms into compassionate, wise warrior-queen beloved by her people type thing. Of course she's got a harem. I can't see myself as her but by gosh I love her.

I think that's the issue (for me) with the Sookie Stackhouse books. Her catnip-like effect on people didn't work on me so each new "they're so into her" got progressively more eye-rolling until I had to stop reading due to dizziness. Yeah I get the in-universe explanation but if I don't adore her, and I can't see myself as her, all the Hot Men just get irritating.

This might be more of an asexual romantic problem now that I think about it? Can't see myself as Sookie due to all the explicitly physical kind of attraction.
posted by Baethan at 5:33 AM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

(To clarify, I have known happy polyamorous people. It's just that it's not something monogamous people can decide to be for somebody else's convenience, not without severing some wires inside.)

mellow seas: I haven't seen Felicity; people seem to like it -- is it worth it? I was particularly thinking of the Hunger Games, where the steadfast guy did win out over the tough brooding guy, although I also think he was dead anyway. I don't remember the last part very well. It was rough times.

I like reading stories about the later days of Mr. and Mrs. Wickham. The one I liked best was an Audible original audio drama, in which it turned out the two of them were made for each other in a Vanity Fair kind of way, but my membership ran out before I found out how it ended.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:35 AM on August 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

I am non-monogamous, so please understand this as a criticism of polyamorous culture and not of polyamory:

Dear Poly People, please stop responding to every goddamn story about love triangles, unhappy relationships, etc. by smugly going "GEE LOOKS LIKE WHAT THESE PEOPLE NEED IS SOME GOOD OLD-FASHIONED POLYAMORY"

The thing that makes romance plots timelessly compelling is that people are complicated, desires are complicated, happiness is complicated, and it's hard enough to figure out how you work that adding in your relationship to another person creates all sorts of complexity. Adding a third person serves as a convenient wedge wherein you can no longer abide by your interpretation of you-in-relationship-to-person-A as the sole truth of who you are, while also dealing with the complex feelings of knowing that, if you start to see yourself differently, it will have a profound and possibly awful impact on somebody who similarly shapes their self-understanding in terms of you.

All of that still happens in non-monogamy, which is why non-monogamy is complicated and why so many non-monogamous people are just as unhappy as monogamous people are. I'd love to see more interesting stories of what happens in non-monogamous relationships, but love triangles aren't really "about" monogamy: they're about the challenges inherent to intimacy. Reducing the complexities of being human down to an engineering problem and insisting that the issue is these people're just using the wrong Relationship Dongle is wildly missing the point, and typically turns compelling stories into self-congratulatory wank.

(If you have not encountered this particular type of Poly Person, please forgive the outburst. Also, #NotAllPolyPeople etc)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 5:44 AM on August 7, 2023 [15 favorites]

I often come across these from the other direction, where I think that the main character might be better off staying single. The "wrong" choice has the wrongness baked into the narrative and the toxic traits the "right" choice is given to provide the illusion of a dilemma are often the sort of things that a declaration of love won't magically cure.
posted by Karmakaze at 6:12 AM on August 7, 2023 [10 favorites]

Not to be That Guy, but I think honestly what these plots need often is not polyamory but anarchism/communism/socialism.

So many times it’s really clear who the OTP is, but it’s hard or complicated or it isn’t ready yet, and the love triangle exists because of the idea that you must be paired in this world, because you simply can’t survive doing your own thing alone.

And this bears out in my own life. I knew who I wanted, but I settled for someone else because I wanted a child and I wanted a home and I wanted economic stability. If I had state fertility assistance and childcare and housing assistance, I would have been happy being single and figuring that shit out, instead of now having to figure out my divorce because ultimately the relationship was doomed *as I knew at the time*.
posted by corb at 7:12 AM on August 7, 2023 [15 favorites]

Despite the pointless addition of polyamory to the original article (really, the author doesn't do anything with it), I was kind of hoping this discussion would stay focused on the idea of the Love Triangle rather than become another Referendum on Polyamory, where the unpersuaded will stay unpersuaded, and the polyamorists will feel attacked (with some reason).

A problem with the Love Triangle, I think, is that a) it's a cheap way to generate drama, so it's often deployed cheaply, b) it has an apparent pedigree (although many have pointed out above that, for example, Austin's triangles aren't), and c) the author can put more of who they find attractive in the story (taken to extremes, this gives us harem anime, which... well). None of these are insurmountable problems, but it does seem to set stories up for a certain amount of sameness (which is true of most tropes). The most frustrating thing for me (in common with others above) is where the choice is so heavily rigged that the reader is eventually puzzled by Option B is even in the running, when Option A is the obvious preference of the author.

I have seen a few books where Option B is the preferred choice of the protagonist's family or society, and the trick is getting past those obstacles to get to Option A, but that's a different kettle of fish. (I also like it when that Option B is reasonable and decent and as caught by society as the protagonist, just because making them a bad person as well as a bad choice seems like stacking the deck a bit too much.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:20 AM on August 7, 2023 [13 favorites]

“mellow seas: I haven't seen Felicity; people seem to like it -- is it worth it?“

Hmm - hard to say! I had a great time watching it, but I watched through it all with a very good friend, so it was a social experience, and I had attended NYU (which is BARELY fictionalized on the show) so I got a nostalgia kick. Definitely a very clever show, though, so I think it could probably stand in its own.

I watched it around ten years ago and don’t remember any problematic, you know, “90s stuff,” so that’s nice.
posted by mellow seas at 9:19 AM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was kind of hoping this discussion would stay focused on the idea of the Love Triangle

I've been trying to unpack what I dislike about the Love Triangle and it might be, among other things, that it puts the protagonist in the position of not knowing what they want, which I think is always gonna be fictionally weaker than a protagonist who knows what they want and is hell-bent on getting it in the face of compelling fictional obstacles.

I mean, you can make a Love Triangle work; I think the gambit here is to convince the reader that Option Vampire and Option Werewolf are both just so hot and relationship-worthy and exciting that there's no way a sane person could choose between them, but if you let that energy drop you're risking a situation where the reader starts to ask themselves why they should care about either of these two love interests, if the protagonist can't even muster up an emotion beyond ambivalence for either one of them.

(also I think I dislike a Love Triangle personally because someone is guaranteed to be disappointed, but I recognize I got Issues)
posted by taquito sunrise at 9:47 AM on August 7, 2023 [6 favorites]

Emma.
Emma is the triangles-upon-triangles Austen opus.
Harriet Smith/Emma Woodhouse/Mr. Elton, who preferred the rich, socially superior matchmaker to her poor-but-pure BFF.
Harriet Smith/Mr. Martin/anyone that Emma chose to pair her with.
Frank Churchill/Jane Fairfax/Emma Woodhouse, who found herself to be the patsy in a game of "Let's pretend that Frank and Jane are not a couple."
Harriet Smith/Emma Woodhouse/Mr. Knightley, the one man that Emma did not pair up with her friend, to her own dismay.

Emma did grow up, stop living her fantasies through others, and find her own happiness. And Mr. Woodhouse gained a second Knightley in the family and an assistant in keeping peace on the property.
posted by TrishaU at 10:31 AM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

not knowing what they want, which I think is always gonna be fictionally weaker than a protagonist who knows what they want and is hell-bent on getting it

Lots of us don’t always know what we want! Hamlet, Prufrock, Emma, etc. "Weaker" is a bit much. Different though. Often less fun.
posted by clew at 11:06 AM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

yeah I should clarify, "weaker" per the modern school of hooky popcorn fiction, I'm not actually trying to invalidate, like, Murakami or whoever here

it's been a while since I read Emma but I remember her as someone who spends the whole novel doggedly pursuing all the things she's decided she wants (RL shipping her friends!), and this is exactly how she keeps making herself unhappy until she learns to calm down, want something healthy, & read the room a little... I can never remember how much I'm conflating OG Emma & Cher from Clueless though
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:41 AM on August 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

(also idk if I need to clarify that I'm not saying people or even characters are weaker for not knowing what they want, just that such characters start off in a weaker position re: all the shit that compels humans to invest in a story & keep turning pages, according to the Popular Precepts of Genre Fic These Days

a weaker starting position here is absolutely not unsalvageable; Hamlet is basically a will-they-won't-they except instead of "are these two gonna smooch" it's "is this guy gonna kill his uncle"

anyway sorry I'm underslept, hypomanic, & On A Helluva Tangent, gonna shut up now & let y'all carry on!)
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:55 AM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

The best part of any love triangle in plot rarely has to do with the person (typically, but not always a woma ) at its center and eveything to do with the chemistry between the two objects of her affection. This often has to do with the character making the choice being the least interesting character in the story.

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. Like sometimes there’s a fascinating double triangle (Dr Zhivago comes to mind…theory still holds, ps) Or Like, “Pretty in Pink” where Andrew McCarthy (bless) and Molly Ringwald were both clearly irrelevant to the perfect and beautiful chemistry of Duckie and young James Spader. I’m not going to argue with you about this. It is facts.
posted by thivaia at 12:33 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Years of polyamory (and, uh, not being a cult leader? ...what?) have impressed upon me the fact that at the end of the day, it is just another way of doing relationships, neither superior nor inferior to any other way. The worst thing about it is the nonstop onslaught of other people's opinions and ensuing cavalcade of straw people, both of which have (disappointingly) appeared in this thread.

I agree that polyamory as a "solution" to the literary device of love triangles is not something that makes sense. I don't see anyone in here or in TFA arguing that it is, though - more saliently, the allure of a love triangle has to do with the protagonist discovering who she, usually, is. It's not that they don't know what they want, exactly - choosing between two men, usually, is a proxy for choosing between two sets of values and two lives.

As per corb's comment above, I'd like to see a treatment of that theme that doesn't use romance as a proxy for values, but 1) we live in a society and 2) romance is exciting to most human beings. (But if you've got fiction recs, I'm all ears.)
posted by fast ein Maedchen at 2:06 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

(also I think I dislike a Love Triangle personally because someone is guaranteed to be disappointed, but I recognize I got Issues)

I think the most entertaining version of the love triangle I have watched lately is a superhero cartoon in which at any given point in time one half of the OTP will be in love with the other's secret identity and the other half of the OTP will be in love with the other's hero identity. It's more of a love square that that point. That, at least, can resolve down to a simple pairing once all of the comedies of error can be explored.
posted by Karmakaze at 2:15 PM on August 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

The comedies of error that is Miraculous Ladybug will never cease to amuse me. I will be very disappointed if the show ever resolves to the simple pairing.

I do know of one romance with love triangle that does resolve without collapsing it, but it's a YA novel by my partner, which is dubiously close to a self-link. She ends it with the heroine saying, Look, we'll all teenagers, we don't yet know what really want, and her non-exclusively dating the two boys for now.
posted by Quasirandom at 3:02 PM on August 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

The appeal of well-known plot structures e.g. that of a love triangle or romantic dilemma is that they introduce artificial conflict to a narrative, and that is a good deal of the point of traditionally structured literature, which is great if you want a story on which to hang observations about life and the human condition, but less so if what you want is an actual relationship, or way to live one's life.

[Grumbles in Tolstoy]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:15 PM on August 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

So many good comments and not one about "Far from the Madding Crowd" so far... I'm in the middle of this novel and love how all the farming drama (my preferred kind of drama) entwines with the romantic drama, even though the author had to engineer Bathsheba's character into a pretty tortured shape to make the rectangle(?) believable.
posted by of strange foe at 8:48 AM on August 8, 2023 [2 favorites]