Virginity in Romance

I.

If I wasn't fortunate enough to take this class, and had someone asked me what the definition of romance was, I probably would have responded with something like, “Well, when a man and a woman really love each other yadda yadda yadda just like Titanic 3D, right?” To an extent I would be right, but for the wrong reasons. Attraction and love between people always falls under the category of romance. And while this briefly quenches the thirst of the question our modern understanding of the word is so simple that its very comprehensibility renders it useless, reducing it to an xyz dictionary term, and removing any potential to go further than what we perceive. Its seeming non-elusiveness is the very thing that keeps us wrapped in its dictionary illusion: something to be understood in a moment rather than experienced through a lifetime. Romance is the individual quest of transformation, self-discovery, and unification with an element of ourselves that is necessary to our identity. Northrop Frye writes that “As we have seen, the message of all romance is de te fabula: the story is about you; and it is the reader who is responsible for the way literature functions, both socially and individually” (186). Through stories, we create meaning of our own bland existence.

To extend the Titanic reference, our immediate understanding is just the tip of the iceberg, an understanding not capable of truly conceptualizing the 90 percent that lies underneath the surface of the unconscious, the unfathomable piece that moves everything and dictates our place in the universal scheme of creation. When we proclaim full comprehension of romance we confine it to a four-cornered room as if it were a component to something larger. Romance is more than just love and attraction between people. It exceeds the boundaries we give it. Romance is life, and the pursuit of life, having just as much to do with the individual's quest as it does with the consummation of love. Similar to Dr. Sexson's mysterious book, his unopened gift that he received from a woman on an airplane many years ago, romance only becomes significant to our lives when we realize that it's not something to be possessed, but something that we are constantly in the process of becoming.

II.

With this I would like to ask the fellow reader to think of life, your life, in the context of stories, and as a metaphor for romance. And from there let us narrow our gaze and focus on one particular part of romance that seems to show up both in our love life and in many of the stories themselves. This happens to be the significance of virginity which is of much more importance in romance than we may at first realize, and for different reasons than we would expect. Of course, there is the social convention of virginity that is the most obvious one. There's plenty of double standards on this issue for both genders. For women, we seem to have in the past regarded them as “used goods” once their virginity had been taken. It's a loss of innocence that signifies a stepping stone in their feminine evolution. Whereas men are perceived as having a higher quality of masculinity when they have “lost” their virginity, than someone having a significantly harder time in the dating game. It is a sort of rite of passage into manhood to successfully woo your lover into the bedsheets, and equally enough a rite of passage for women as well. But why is this social convention here, and what does it mean? The answer is tied up in the conventions of romance and storytelling. Frye says that “It looks as though there were some structural principle in this type of story which makes it natural to postpone the first sexual act of the heroine...the social reasons for the emphasis on virginity, however obvious, are still not enough for understanding the structure of romance” (72-3). It is more than socially important. We must consider all aspects of our external lives as reflections of, and metaphors for, the internal journey we are on. In other words think of virginity in relation to the world of mythos around us. There is always an emphasis on protecting chastity in the face of unchaste advances, because virginity is inextricably tied in with our personal identity, that sense of “becoming” in romance that I mentioned earlier. Once we stop becoming, once we halt the process of romance in our lives, we stop the unfolding of creation and the only possible direction is loss of identity and death.

III.

One of the first stories we read was that of Daphnis and Chloe. I chose to focus on this one in particular because it still remains one of my favorites after all the stories we've read. Their naivete and innocence seems to warm the heart in the coldest of places, and melt it where it was already soft to begin with. From the beginning our narrator starts out by saying that the story we are about to hear came from “the most beautiful sight I have ever seen, a painting of an image, a love story...it is intended to heal the sick and to console the afflicted, to bring back memories for those who have known love, and to give instruction to those who have not” (137). He seems to sum up life quite nicely here. It is a beautiful image of love, and the entire story of these two people swings on the single hinge of innocent love as the driving force for their life. It's the most powerful force in the universe.

They grow up together, and once Chloe discovers her feelings for Daphnis while they're bathing, she kisses him, and Daphnis realizes that he is attracted to Chloe as well. Once this happens our narrator goes on to say that “they desired something, they did not know what they desired. This only they knew, that the kiss had destroyed him and the bath had destroyed her” (149). This initiates what I have referred to as romance as the pursuit of life. What they desire is not something to be readily obtained within a moment's notice. “There is no remedy, no cure, for Love, no drink, no food, no spells to chant, nothing – only kisses and embraces and lying down naked together” (159). Only their journey can take them towards this consummation. And this proves true, as they face many separations and trials of chastity between that moment and when they finally reunite at the end of the story as two very different individuals that have undergone their own unique transformation.

The time eventually comes when Chloe learns “for the first time, that the things they had done earlier in the woods were merely games that shepherds play” (210), and it is here that she loses her virginity. And as I said before, this would usually signify the symbolic loss of an identity. But what she loses in personal identity, she gains back in unity with her lover, Daphnis. Frye says that “One of the most fundamental of human realizations is that passing from death to rebirth is impossible for the same individual” (89). In the consummation of their love, they are perpetuating their own identities, and their own rebirth with the redemption of children. Chloe undergoes a rebirth in that the very moment she is destroyed, she is subsequently reborn again. Her identity is not destroyed at all, but undergoes a displacement onto someone else as they both take part in the universal act of creation. The story may quit at this point, but the beautiful thing is that the romance hasn't ended. They will certainly live on in the human imagination, and as long as the stories like this keep getting told, the romance continues forever as we discover that our own lives are merely just an extension of where this story leaves off.

IV.

We see the same thing occurring in Zimmer's retelling of the story of Shiva. Much like Chloe, Shiva is chaste and virginal. He has no desire to marry any woman, whatsoever. His only concern is detachment from the material world, the illusion of Maya, and chooses to focus on his yoga and remain in deep meditation. However, Brahma, the life force, knows that the universe cannot be sustained between his creative powers, Vishnu's continuance, and Shiva's ultimate destruction, unless romance is injected into Shiva's life. “But now, if you remain for all time aloof from the course of history, yoked in your yoga, clean of every gladness and grief, it will not be possible for you to play your necessary part in the development of the picture. How are creation, preservation, and destruction to mesh, if the absorbing diabolic powers are not perpetually held in check?” (272). While Shiva's virginity is a symbol of his pure identity, it is one that is meant to be destroyed in order to continue the process of creation. And in that process the individual undergoes personal transformations that lead to the path of self-discovery and will reunite him in the end with a new found sense of innocence and redemption that could not have been obtained before.

We cannot avoid emotions, happiness, and grief if we wish to be a part of this universe. If we don't yield the symbolic virginity, or suffer some other destruction of identity, then we suffer the destruction worse than death: never undergoing the process of individuation, never participating in creation, and thus never being a part of the great story.

Shiva is fooling himself with the dictionary romance, a social contract that defines it as only something to be obtained, occurring only on a Friday night date at dinner and a movie, rather than realizing that romance is something that never ceases. And if he followed through with this mindset he would have denied himself the transformation. For as important as virginity is, as a symbol of what Frye calls “a human conviction, however expressed, that there is something at the core of one's infinitely fragile being which is not only immortal but has discovered the secret of invulnerability that eludes the tragic hero” (86), it is equally necessary to lose this symbol of immortality in order to participate in the creative process of the universe and replace our virginity with an everlasting redemption.

V.

It is here that we come to see the connection between the virgin identity, and its loss, as merely another stepping stone along the path of self-discovery, the romance that never ends. It is this cyclical repetition that balances the universe. Brahma says to Shiva that “in the counterpoise of our powers we are dependent on each other, mutually, and must perform our several works in co-operation; otherwise, there can be no world” (271).

So now if anyone ever asks me what true romance is, I don't have to reference a Hollywood film to explain myself, because I now know better. Instead I might sit them down, hand them a copy of Northrop Frye's book, and ask “Well...how much time do you have?” Because as we have seen, the sufficient amount of time to explain what romance is all about will take the process of a lifetime.

It's not just the happy ending of the story, the kiss on the lips, it's the story itself, the adventure. This is where the meaning unravels itself to us. The process of life from beginning to end is all romance, and what better way is there to express this important concept than through the fantastic medium of a story.

About Our Perfect Romance Story

Initially, our group met up one day in the library to hash out what would go in our story. And after talking about it the only framework we really ended up needing was two people who fall in love and set out on a journey to find the other one. In a very minimal definition this is really the set up of a lot of romances: a separation between something destined to be together which prompts the search and the journey, and ends in unity with each other. Our story was basically outlined right there and the only thing left was to give it life and create meaning for it, and that's really where all the fun begins. So we just started brainstorming and writing down all the events and fantastic ups and downs we wanted to throw our characters into, drawing our sources from the stories we've read, the essential elements of romance, and basically just trying to put them through as many obstacles and transformations as possible before they happen to coincidentally stumble across each other. With our big list of adventure we set up a Google document and did the "popcorn fiction" thing. Sam wrote the first part, I did the middle, and Jenny tied it all up for us at the end. I had a lot of fun writing it and watching how even between three people, and even with a list of the most arbitrary ideas, a romance appeared to emerge organically from the chaos.

So what exactly was it that made our story the perfect romance? It was a question we unfortunately ran out of time for. As I mentioned before we made sure from the start that we would follow the typical pattern of separation, adventure, and reunion. But we all know this still isn't good enough criteria to be called the perfect romance. Here are just a few of the romantic elements picked out from our story:

Apparent Death: When Alf heard over the radio that a girl of Lorelei's same description had been missing for a while, he assumed the worst and feared that his true love might be gone for good.

Revelation: Alf has a revelation when he's sitting in the ocean and thinking about what the old man said.


Identity: Lorelei has to go incognito as a man in order to escape from the prostitution ring and continue her search for Alf.

Break in consciousness: Alf falls into a deep sleep where images of the temptress at the train station keep his mind preoccupied, causing him to miss his destination.

Descent: Lorelei has to become a prostitute, and re-enter into a submissive role that she had just escaped from. Alf is forced to survive in the wilderness after wrecking his vehicle on a desolated highway.

Ascent: Lorelei eventually becomes leader of the rebellion group. Alf finds money buried in the ground, thus overturning his bad fortune.

And last but not least,

Happy Ending: Alf and Lorelei are reunited at the end of the story, finally able to embrace one another for the first time since they had met.

After our performance I overheard Dr. Sexson saying how our story followed very closely the plot of Shakespeare's Pericles. Not sure about Jenny and Sam, but I've never even read this play before. So I thought it was really interesting how even in a situation where we try, in individually separate efforts, to come up with our own original story, it can still end up closely resembling other stories that came before it. It just reinforces what I've slowly started to realize as this class progressed throughout the semester. We should read and think "Wait a minute. It feels like I've heard this before." I consider this good news because it really reinforces the legitimacy and truth of romance, and makes Frye's book and the other things we've been studying that much more intriguing. I guess the old adage of the infinite monkey theorem holds true, at least in my case anyway: put a monkey in a room with a typewriter and he will eventually produce Shakespeare. It sounds like I was one of those unaware monkeys, a monkey who only knew a little bit what makes a perfect romance.

 

My Sort-of-a-Prospectus

Alright so as far as topics for my term paper I'm still lacking a solid thesis because I'm juggling two different ideas that I can't really decide on. My first idea was to write about the significance of virginity in romance. Not the physical virginity itself, but what it represents for the broader scope of romance and storytelling, and how the term can be applied to the lives of those who have and have not "lost" it yet. My other idea was a paper dealing with one of the big issues we've been trying to tackle this semester, which is, what is the importance of stories that aren't true? How can they apply to our lives, today, amidst our addiction to realism? 

Of course, both of these are really huge topics, and I'm having trouble narrowing them down to any workable form, much less even deciding on which one I want to do. As it stands, this is the status of my term paper topic, just so no one thinks I'm asleep at the wheel of a car that's quickly careening towards the brick wall at the end of the semester. So...thoughts and suggestions on what would make a better paper are appreciated.     

Castle Anthrax and the Oldest Romance of the Soul

We can't possibly talk about medieval romance without at least referencing one of my favorite medieval movies of all time: Monty Python and The Holy Grail. It's always hard not think of it every time the subject of the Middle Ages comes up, mostly because it's just a hilarious movie. Why wouldn't anyone want to be reminded of it? But this time around, thanks to Zimmer's commentary on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a very particular scene was brought to mind for a different reason besides medieval humor. I actually found a scholastically worthwhile connection I had not seen before. Below I give you Castle Anthrax and the Great Temptation of Sir Galahad the Chaste (with Italian subtitles):

What reminded me of this scene was Zimmer's reference to "Le Chateau Merveil: a place full of frightening trials and amazing experiences...a veritable "isle of women" (81), thought to be a sort of netherworld where one may enter but never return. However, "the one who enters and survives the trials demonstrates himself to be the hero elect, effects the release of all the women from their spells of bondage, and becomes the lord consort of the queen" (82). Now of course on the surface, one could see how this challenge might be particularly appealing to knights, and to one such as Sir Gawain. For who wouldn't want to become the lord consort over a castle full of women? But Zimmer, and ourselves included, are too smart to take sexual pandering as an explanation for this situation. What is this story really trying to show us? Well, depending on which version is being told, Gawain may or may not return from this netherworld of maternal charm, and that seems to make all the difference.

In this first version, Gawain comes to the castle after his long, wearied journey where he finds some relief and "a solution of the riddle of life and death. And here he shall win the long-desired and withheld reply. His oracle shall be maternal womanhood, the unspoken intuitive wisdom of the life force which, by its living presence, shall make intelligible to him the mystery of its own repeated rebirth through transient generations" (83). This may sound like a pretty sweet deal but Le Chateau Merveil is as much "a region of certain bliss" (83) as it is an enchantment, an illusion, an isolation from life. "The women there, as well as their male consort, dwell in the melancholy mood of the dead. They yearn to be back in the world of man and common life, but can never leave the island" (83). It appears that in terms of romantic descent, our hero has reached the very bottom of the well, and discovered a wonder land of untold pleasures, revealed secrets, and answers to life's greatest questions. However, submission to this sort of desire comes at a heavy price. To return to, and remain in, the realm of truth will always require a permanent separation from the world of man, from reality, and from life. We have all the answers now, but are entirely isolated. It suggests that even when getting to the very bottom of the truth, there is no way to cheat the cycle of life and death, because that is the only kind of truth there really is. We may remain within the realm of truth, master it, know it, control it, but it requires a consignment of ourselves to an early death of self. Zimmer says that this quest to the bottom is fundamentally part of the only quest there really is for all the great heroes, and to an even greater extent, humanity. "[He] discovers then that he is bound (as all mankind is bound) to the maternal principle of Mother Earth, Mother Life, bound to the ever-revolving wheel of life-through-death; and he becomes enwrapped therewith in the heroic melancholy that was known to all...who descended into the abyss of the domain beyond" (84). The women in the castle represent a descent into, a return into, the source of life and death that we came from, and must eventually acknowledge.

However, there is no redemption in a permanent descent. There must be an ascent, a way out after discovering the truth. Which is why Zimmer includes the other version of this tale where Sir Gawain chooses not to submit himself, or fully immerse himself in the bottomless truth, but instead "[resists] the blandishments of this mistress of the realm of death...By refusing to become the lord consort of the dazzlingly beautiful shadow-queen...By not capitulating to the generating principle of the life that is bound with death, the hero disengages himself from the self-consuming cycle" (84-5). In another reference to the symbolic virginity, Gawain chooses not to remain in the maternal realm of truth and pleasure, which is as self-destructive as it is eternal, but instead retains a sense of chastity, and denies temptation, which allows his escape and eventual redemption from the horror of the evil life-and-death-consuming wheel. Once again, a return to chastity, virginity, and innocence are necessary as a catalyst for rebirth, and the hero's redemption and defeat of death (or at the very least a prolonging of it).

After reading Zimmer's commentary, and re-watching what I once thought was just a funny scene from a movie, I discovered that maybe the Monty Python comedy troupe might have more literary merit than I once thought. We see at the beginning of the scene an image of the grail hanging over the castle. As the object of pursuit in the movie, it comes to represent the sort of immortality that Zimmer talks about, the rebirth for ourselves that we all seek. And as the hero of this particular quest, it is only right that Sir Galahad descends into the walls of the castle in order to search for this immortality himself. Once inside he is greeted by the virginal women in white, who occupy a realm that is as much "in the melancholy mood of the dead" as it is "a region of certain bliss." Castle Anthrax, much like Le Chateau Merveil, is now an oxymoron, a place of false security. Our Galahad has fallen to the bottom of some deep waters and discovered that maternal source of life (which is equal parts desirous and fatal) and found the wheel upon which he is bound.

However, this isn't your typical medieval romance. This is Monty Python. The story still arrives at the same redemptive conclusion as Sir Gawain's; the defeat over Galahad's "great peril" is still there. But it arrives at this end in a strange, convoluted way that only Monty Python could pull off. Through a string of lecherous reasoning on the part of both parties, there is definitely plenty of descending going on when compared to his previous reputation as a chaste and pure knight. The seemingly noble character of Sir Galahad the Chaste (who really hasn't faced much temptation up to this point to earn that title, and whose "strong-minded virtues" quickly crumble at the sight of a single sexual temptation and opportunity), really isn't noble or chaste at all. In fact he actually becomes quite the opposite. After a little bit of persuasion on the side of the women, he is ready to throw all his values out the window in order to gratify himself and spend the rest of his life in the castle. With his agreement, the noble Sir Galahad is eventually reduced, morally, to the basest of creatures who is only driven by his sexual needs, and even rejects the idea that he was losing control of himself to begin with. In Northrop Frye's chapter on descent, he seems to have this one pinned down perfectly. He says that "in romance the paradisal is frequently a deceitful illusion that turns out to be demonic or a destructive vision...It is possible to get out of this lower world, and some may not even want to. For it may also assume the form of a false paradise" (98, 123). Galahad becomes so enraptured with these women, that he really doesn't care where he may end up, as long as he can remain there with them. In reference to one of this particular story's mythological sources, The Odyssey, Frye says that "Of those turned into animals by Circe, some might refuse to return to human shape" (123). In this sexual temptation, Galahad shows a similar metamorphosis by abandoning his redemptive innocence, and becoming a baser creature from which he does not wish to return.

The structure is still the same as the Sir Gawain story. Only the emphasis is on how the character manages to triumph in the most humorous and degenerate way possible (through the baseness of his character, and by way of Sir Lancelot who has to come in and drag him out by the collar), rather than in Sir Gawain's tale where triumph was attained through his own virtue. Galahad probably would have remained in his eternal descent, but thankfully through the help of friends, an eventual ascent was achieved. And even though the ascent of his personal journey wasn't put into action by his own motivation, Lancelot still served as the mechanism of recognition necessary for Galahad's escape. With the help of an external companion to achieve this ascent and break the spell, the Monty Python adaptation is able to integrate and contain both versions of the Sir Gawain tale: Galahad falls under the spell and wishes to remain there forever, which is the first version of the story. And Galahad is eventually rescued from his peril by the intervention of Lancelot, who represents the virtue needed to overcome the temptation, of which Sir Gawain would have possessed internally to overcome his own temptation in the second version of the story.

Originality and Tradition

I had such a great time listening to everyone's presentations over the last several classes! There was definitely a lot of thought and creativity put into these fairy tales, and even into how they were presented to the class. It ended up being just as much fun to listen to and figure out, as it was to write my own. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect out of this project when it was first assigned to us at the beginning of the semester, but overall I think I ended up having way more fun with it than I thought I would. And this may go down in the Kenny Johnson history books as one of the better midterm projects in recent memory. 

One of the major things that I've been starting to realize in this class, especially after listening to everyone else's stories, is that to the reader with a trained eye, the boundary between originality and tradition becomes much smaller than we once thought. And that is what we are becoming with this class and each progressive English class we complete: readers with increasingly trained and tuned-in eyes. It seems the more well-read we become, and the more we learn about the structure of stories, the easier it is to trace these displacements back to their source and determine which myth or folktale tradition they belong to, because they all belong to some former story of the past. 

This predictable and formulaic structure of stories throughout the ages shows that they have something more to offer us than mere entertainment. Stories shape who we are, define what it means to be a human, and offer all of us a common ground of support in a universe that is cold, indifferent, and bent on our destruction. As Frye says, "a mythological universe is a vision of reality in terms of human concerns and hopes and anxieties: it is not a primitive form of science" (14).

Now some may say that knowledge of structure, the ability to recognize which myth or folktale it relates to, and the attention to patterns and conventions would ruin stories entirely; it would take out all of the fun. It would make them too predictable, and cause us to lose interest and the ability to get sucked in. But I'd have to disagree. If anything, the realization that every story is an imitation connected to older stories makes them that much more profound and enjoyable. When we curl up on the couch to read that latest bestselling novel, or go out on a date to see that funny romantic comedy everyone's been talking about, we are engaging in the same activity that our ancestors thousands of years before us were doing when they gathered around the fire to tell tales of fearsome giants, great battles, and epic quests. When we engage ourselves with stories, we become a part of that same experience. Stories are the great universal connecting piece between people of all different cultures and ages. As humans, we all have the same questions, share the same fears, passions, and pleasures. Regardless of culture or era, all of us, in some way or another, share the same fundamental experiences. When we open the first page of that new book, it's not entirely crazy to imagine ourselves as a member of that ancient tribe, huddled around the same smoky, thousand-year-old fire. When we read that first sentence, it's not entirely crazy to consider ourselves as sitting under that same starry sky as the first words of a hero's long quest are spoken. And I don't think it would be entirely crazy to consider ourselves as sharing in their same journey. 

Since our first shallow plunge into the ocean at the beginning of the semester, I've been starting to notice more and more in the things I read outside of class, that stories I once considered highly original and innovative, are merely just very talented displacements of the great tales told before it. And the deeper we go into the ocean, the more connections and conventions I start to notice and the more I begin to realize that maybe this business of storytelling really isn't as complicated or cerebral as I once thought it was. This assignment got me thinking that maybe all it really requires is a lightly structured framework with a modest helping of imagination to fill the rest in. It seems that the best kinds of writers have never existed as a solitary island, or conjured up stories out of the thin air of their own minds. Instead, they have the full weight of humanity's storytelling knowledge and imagination at their fingertips, and draw upon it for their own creations. Much like Haroun's father in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, great storytellers seem to rely on that well, or invisible tap, that lives as a garden faucet in the base of everyone's mind. It is rooted in The Ocean and its source has been drilled deep into the wellspring of the human consciousness. The only problem is that some of our faucets are a little bit rusted, or maybe haven't had the valve opened up quite enough to allow for stronger streams. According to Haroun's father, Rashid, this ability to tell magnificent stories comes from, "the great Story Sea...I drink the warm Story Waters and then I feel full of steam" (17). And that is what we did with this assignment. We opened our tap, and drank from The Ocean of Stories to create the steam in our bellies that was the driving force for our displaced fairy tale. It's interesting now to see how even the most realistic of realities come from the most imaginary of places.      

We may not have had a brutal exam, or a long research paper or project to do for our class midterm (as so many of my friends in other departments had), but it seems like if we did the same thing as other departments then we wouldn't have learned as much. I think all too often we equate assignment length or difficulty with comprehensiveness, or with how much learning potential there is for the student. If we had an extensive, formal exam, then we would have just studied the material and proved our knowledge and understanding of the subject through rote memorization. And most likely the material would have been forgotten by next semester anyway. I couldn't even count how many things I've had to memorize over the course of my education just to pass a class, that I ended up forgetting only a few short months down the line. But this assignment offered us a chance to not just use and think about what we needed to learn, but to experience it ourselves. And I can't think of a better way to study stories than to immerse ourselves in them, work on creating our own, and share them with others. 

With all of the apparent structure and convention we've been able to pick out so far, there still remains a deeper layer to everything that is not structured or rooted in convention at all. It's the other half of storytelling that isn't able to be tested, much less defined; it can't be qualified or learned through exams, memorization, and research papers. This is what we call imagination, and it's something that can't really be captured or taught in a formal academic setting because it lies beyond the realm of reason and reality that we've learned to cling so tightly to. We may be able to learn the basic framework for a story through these methods, but without any participation or imagination our framework is pointless. Because what's the use of knowledge of formulas if there is no substance? What the use in studying a story, if not to use it to tell better stories of our own and more deeply appreciate the work that other storytellers do?         

A Displaced Fairytale

Two young children named Geraldo and Gabrielle were living on their parent's small potato farm outside Tijuana, Mexico. But the crops weren't doing too well since the drought had started, and the family was quickly running out of money. Sadly, the children's mother also had an unquenchable thirst for Tequila that was quite expensive. And rather than stop drinking, she suggested they send their children into the city tomorrow morning for good, to shine shoes, since they could no longer afford to feed them.

When Geraldo and Gabrielle overheard their parent's plan to abandon them in the mean streets of Tijuana they were at first very distraught as to how they would survive. But Geraldo remembered his father's old collection of maps in the garage and snuck out to grab one before the next morning so they could still find their way back home.

The parents woke them up early the next day and told Gabrielle and Geraldo they were taking a surprise trip into Tijuana so the family could shine shoes and help pay the month's bills, and they loaded everyone into their old Toyota pickup. When they arrived deep in the city's center, the parents gave them their rags and shoe polish, but stopped by an ice cream shop before starting the day's work. Geraldo and Gabrielle had never had ice cream before, and were endlessly thrilled and distracted by it's wonderful taste. While devouring the ice cream cones their mother and father slipped away quietly and headed home, leaving the children to survive on the mean streets of Tijuana.

Luckily the farm was just outside the city, and Geraldo wasn't concerned since he still had his map. However, just as he was pulling it out to look at it, a strong breeze caught it up and swept it away from him. They both chased, but to no avail. The map had been swept away for good.

They tried to find their way back, but having never been in such a large, mean city they ended up walking until nightfall and still had no idea where they were. Exhausted, they slept in an alleyway for the night.

The next morning they woke up starving with nothing to eat, and decided to use their rags and shoe polish to try and make some money to buy food. After a few hours of looking for work, a very old woman with a large coin purse, and the nicest pair of bright red shoes walked past them, and seeing their shoe polish, offered a very decent wage for shining them up. Geraldo and Gabrielle were quite good at this, and they impressed the old woman so much that she offered them a job at her shoe factory. They gladly accepted, but unknown to them, the old woman actually ran a child labor camp, and only fed them mere crumbs to work long hours everyday making shoes. The children were horrified when they realized how much trouble they had gotten themselves into, and feared they would never get out.

A week later, Gabrielle was ordered by the old woman to sew up some new shoes. But having never done this before, and Gabrielle being the cunning girl that she was, saw her opportunity and asked the old woman if she could come show her how. Furious, the old woman came over to show her how to run the large, industrial sewing machine, and just as she was starting it up, Gabrielle shoved her hands underneath the machine and they became tangled and sewn together so that she couldn't move at all. She grabbed the coin purse off her belt and made a dash with Geraldo out the door. They ran and ran and came upon a donkey rental station, where they met up with a helpful old bandelero who offered them a ride back to the farm in exchange for a few gold pieces.

When they returned, their father was overjoyed they had come back safely. And even more pleased to see they had brought back enough pesos to save the family farm, and put their drunken mother into rehab.

A Little Taste of Love on Valentine's Day

I'm no art critic but I'd have to say that among the paintings I looked at of Daphnis and Chloe, this one by Louis Hersent has to be my favorite of them all. But the main reason for this isn't because of the colors in the picture, or the composition, or because this is what I imagined them looking like when I read the story, even though those are all part of it. The one thing that stuck out to me is the unusual action that they happen to be doing in this scene. It seems that Daphnis is pulling a thorn out from the foot of an injured Chloe, and putting his arm around her for comfort. It captures a moment of innocence, and also a moment of vulnerability between the two, which seem to show up together a lot in the story. She's almost like a child who has fallen down and scraped her knee. Forget chocolates, roses, and sentimental Hallmark cards. It's the little things like this that seem to really capture what a romance can truly be, and I couldn't think of a better depiction of love for Valentine's day.

But perhaps the most beautiful part to me is what I feel that thorn represents for our two lovers. Throughout most of our readings of romance, we have seen that innocence is often tempted by very violent, and not so innocent forces, only to be refuted time and time again because the love between the two was too powerful to be defeated by such a shallow cause. This thorn is what has punctured the innocence and chastity of Chloe in a very symbolic way, but with Daphnis there by her side there is nothing to fear for long. They make each other strong in the face of threats like this. He will carefully remove it and the thorn will no longer be a threat to the innocent love that exists between them.