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.