What is Fashioned Love?

Romance, it should come so simple to us when we have all these books and movies to guide us on what love is and how we’re supposed to love. Throughout Russian literature there’s this common theme where two lovers tend to fall in love, ones rich while the other is poor. In many 19^th Century Russian literature authors like Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, and Fyodor Dostoevsky tend to use the common theme in their stories with their characters being unable to depict the differences between real life and their dreams. In Leo Tolstoy- The Kreutzer Sonata he mentions “Marriage without love is not marriage; that love alone sanctifies a marriage, and that real marriage is only such as is sanctified by love” (164). This quote is from a conversation a group of travelers are having on a train ride and this is a lady’s opinion on what should make the basis of a marriage. The obvious answer to anyone would be love and that’s what most books center around, the ideology that love is what makes a relationship. We as a society read these book and understand that we need to be in love to marry or we will be dissatisfied and unfulfilled if we get married for other reasons. Today with quick access to the internet, books, and all sorts of entertainment we see the happiest couples and think this is what love is and what it should look like for us. The question is why do we feel it needs to be this exact way? There’s an extent to every book we’ve read so far that a character falls in love based of what they’ve learned unable to depict reality from fantasy. Fashioned love is a common theme that a lot of Russian writer tend to use in their stories, like in Nikolai Gogol’s Nevsky Prospect, the main character Piskarev falls in love with a woman from the figment of his imagination and when he sees her in real life her actual personality is so shocking that after she rejects him he kills himself proving how strong the affect Fashioned love has on someone.

Fashioned love is love based of what you believe love is, yes everyone has their own interpretation of love however fashioned love is specifically influenced by books and things you learn and think love should be like. Gogol’s Nevsky Prospect follows a painter, Piskarev that falls madly in love with the perfect women who he’s manifested in his head, not realizing she’s a prostitute. Piskarev confesses his feeling to his beloved saying “I’ll sit over my paintings, you’ll sit by me, inspiring my labors, embroidering or doing some other handwork, and we won’t lack for anything” (266) to which she responds “What! I’m not laundress or seamstress that I should do any work” (266). This scene wakes Piskarev up from his dreams realizing that she isn’t going to be the obedient loving wife he wanted her to be. Her personality ends up being far from his perception of her and she doesn’t want a typical domestic lifestyle, so when she shuts him down he realizes she isn’t the woman he created he becomes devastated. As a result, he commits suicide slitting his throat. In A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov the main characters Princess Mary at first dislikes Pechorin because of his odd behavior towards her, unlike every man he doesn’t worship her. Her feelings for him change one night at a ball Mary starts seeing Pechorin as a hero because he saves her from having to dance with a drunk man, it says “I went up to the drunk, took him rather firmly by the arm and looking steadily into his eyes, asked him to go away, because I added, the princess had long ago promised to dance the mazurka with me” (109). This is the scene where the book changes and Mary starts falling for Pechorin, she starts executing the term called the Don Quixote effect. This term comes from a book written by Miguel de Cervantes where the main character Don Quixote reads so much romance novels that he starts believing he is a hero and has to save everyone trying to battle monsters. To Mary Pechorin is her hero who saves her from embarrassment and harassment.

Although books and other sources like movies give useful insight to love and romance it can still play a drastic part in how a person structures their relationship. I agree that a people fashion their love based on books, movies, music and social norms. This causes them to fuse reality with imagination into one. Books could be used as an escape imagine the impossible especially for women who were so confined by men. Women weren’t allowed to show visible interest towards a man and if they chose a favorite that would be dishonorable to themselves and their families. By focusing on the quote “I shall tell you the whole truth… I shall neither justify myself, nor explain my actions. I do not love you” (136) the readers overlook the deeper problem of this quote from A Hero of Our Time. Yes, Pechorin breaks Mary’s heart and was using her this whole time, but she became blinded by him so much to notice that he was using her, he had this alluring power of her. This is because she put him into the place of a hero and heroes always save people, they never have bad intentions. Also by doing this he humiliates her and stains her honor because women aren’t allowed to tell the men they love him first. Men were allowed to show more affection towards women, if a man romanticized a woman and they had a relationship without them ended up together it would be the woman’s fault and not the man. Lermentov claims that women should be ashamed to admit the feelings to a man, he proves this when Mary accidently revealed her love to Pechorin saying “Perhaps you wish me to be the first to say I love you… Do you wish it?” (133), which rest upon the questionable assumption that this is a biased opinion. It isn’t considered at least considered that it’s both sides play a part. Pechorin maps out how he will get Mary to succumb to him, knowing her reactions and wanted her to fall for him so he can break her heart. Pechorin has a personal message to take Mary honor away from her and he does that when she accidently tells him she loves him first.  

This is topic overlooked by couples in relationships without them knowing. Nowadays they see what’s on television, movies, and plays and essentially try to reenact that. They think this is what relationships need to be like, these are healthy relationships. This produces over expectations of your partner from you and then in return you received disappointment. People don’t know where to draw a line between what’s real or fake. Today everyone wants to perfect relationship and wants everyone to see how ‘perfect” it is on the outside but how long can the relationship last? This happens in First love by Ivan Turgenev, Vladimir’s dad doesn’t love his mother, he married her for her money and his gain of status. She’s too old for him, which may result in his pursuit for younger women in this instance Zinaida. On the outside the family seemed conventional like they got along, but in reality no one cared about Vladimir and his mother was too preoccupied pinning over the affection of his father to notice him. The relationship between his parents mirrors the effect that what we see we think is correct. Vladimir thinks what his parents have is a stable relationship and ends up seeking out a relationship just like theirs without realizing that it’s actually a toxic relationship. At the end of the story he says “that’s love, that’s passion! To think of not revolting of bearing a blow from any one whatever… even the dearest hand! But it seems one can, if one loves… While I… Imagined…” (36). This was his reaction to discovering his father and Zinaida’s affair, at first he is shocked then he justifies it because it’s his father who hits her and he worships his father. There’s also the fact that people believe they need to fall in love a particular way and if they don’t then their love might not last for instance in the Blizzard by Alexander Pushkin it’s stated “Marya Gavrilovna was brought up on French novels and consequently was in love. Her chosen one was poor ensign who was then on leave in his village” (20). This quote says so much, this is not just any girl falling in love, she is a rich girl who falls in love with a poor boy. French novels and a forbidden romance she knows her parents won’t approve of, but she loves him anyways and is willing to elope with him. She lives through the book and not real life, confusing her feelings for being real when she’s just caught up with the story. Vladimir does the same thing basing relationships off of others not knowing what a stable one looks like.

 There is another the other perspective that I’m not completely right and some people do know better not to confuse their feelings for what they see, and I do agree because not everyone is the same and some people are able to see past the fairytale and acknowledge how to cover hardships and struggles in a relationship while being together. There’s also the fact that it could be a majority of younger people that this happens to which could be true, but it can happen to anyone of all age groups like in First Love Vladimir’s dad wasn’t that young but he acted cliché and had an affair with a younger girl just because he didn’t like his wife. In Leo Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata, he acknowledges both sides of marriage love and arranged. Some people believe you should marry for love while other don’t think love is real. He even mentions “Oh but that happens only in novels and never in real life. In real life preference for one may last for years (that happens rarely), more often a for months, or perhaps for weeks, days, hours” (165). He argues both sides of the spectrum and states where both sides are coming from, yet he adds in the realistic standpoint which is people base love on what they think it should be rather than what it actually is.

Although many people deny it Fashioned love is real and there are many people who say “I want what the movies have”. Russian literature helps acknowledge that some characters become so consumed and caught up in having a perfect relationship that when they don’t get their expectations it can be so disheartening to them. This plays an important part in real relationships, because it can question why are you really in a relationship and if you’re in it for the right reasons. Is your relationship based of books and movies or do you have a real relationship, where you don’t try to recreate everything you see? This can help a couple reevaluate their relationship and if they’re in it for the right reason. What if they don’t have anything in common and are just together because they look well together. Looks can be deceiving and what someone sees on the outside may not be what your relationship actually is on the inside. Fashioned love can influence you into wanting a fake relationship that’s perfect like how most romantic books go happily ever after, but will it really be a happily ever after? That being said there are couple that do know how to distance themselves from what they read and see and strive for having a realistic relationship.

Work Cited Page:

Primary sources:

• Dostoevsky, Fyodor. White Nights . 1848.

• Gogol, Nikolai. Nevsky Prospect. 1835.

• Lermontov, Mikhail. “Princess Mary.” A Hero of Our Time, Alfred A. Knopf, INC. , 1958, pp. 78–163.

• Pushkin, Alexander. “The Blizzard .” The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin , 1831, pp. 20–32.

• Tolstoy, Leo. The Kreutzer Sonata. New American Library, a Division of Penguin Group , 2003.

• Turgenev, Ivan, and V. Pritchett. First Love. Penguin Classics, 2014.