Laws Against Love: Border Crossing Through Western, Classic, and Modern Fiction, and Its Effects on Our Reality
Many say that there is nothing more powerful than love. Love makes people do horrible, impossible, remarkable things. Love causes great violence, sacrifice, and loss, as we have seen in the novel God of Small Things from the love laws imposed throughout the book. For, if you combine the incredibly powerful force of love with law, you have a very dangerous, twisted power on your hands. Throughout this article, we will examine the effects of love laws on classic fiction, modern fantasy, and the current reality of our world, and we will analyze how these laws of the white imperialist imposed onto natives in the postcolonial world relate and transmit in different contexts to these other mediums.
Love Laws in Modern Fiction
Love laws drive the modern fiction of our world like the wave of a tsunami. Such well known titles as The Selection, Twilight, Me Before You, Everything, Everything, Shrek, and so many others, all have strife and plot dictated by who may or may not love whom. By examining the origins of love laws in God of Small Things, we will come to find just how much the laws of colonists and settlers of post colonialism influence modern and classic fiction set in America, as well as their part in the actual reality of our country.
To begin, let us first examine God of Small Things, which paints a brutal picture of “who should be loved and how much” as it relays the heartbreaking affair between a higher-caste woman and an “untouchable” man, and how it affects their family and the society around them. Much heartbreak, injustice, cruelty, and death occur; all because of the imposed laws of love and culture on a postcolonial, hybrid society. Those in power do everything in their force to extinguish this forbidden love, and brutally punish the two involved for trying to follow their hearts. Ammu and Velutha had to endure the pain of loving one another from a distance, and suffer the consequences when they no longer could bear to be a part. The culture of their society had no mercy, the caste system was never meant to be crossed; Velutha was beaten and left to death, Ammu was exiled, and their families had to go on from there. Ammu’s children were scarred, and again, their society was unforgiving. They had to move on with life and forever live with the trauma, caught in a web of trying to forget, remember, and belong; only to come yet again to break the love laws over, with each other, and repeat the past.
The concept of caste is equally as damaging in this next novel, but it is applied in a different context. It’s influence is drawn more from social acceptability, instead of brute control. So, let us look closer now to The Selection series, which portrays the journey of America Singer, a five in her kingdom of Illea’s caste system. America longs to marry Aspen, her best friend and childhood love. But, since Aspen is a seven in the caste system, their affair must be secret and forbidden. Adding to the difficulty of their forbidden love, America is thrust into The Selection, a competition to win the heart of Illea’s prince Maxon, a one.
The Selection series is tale of intrigue, mystery, deception, and betrayal of politics, family, and kingdom, yet it is the laws banning Aspen and America’s affair and the rules of the competition for the prince’s favor that underscores it all.
Love laws in this last novel, draw yet again from social acceptance, as we see the entirety of the Twilight series is built around Edward and Bella’s connection, and the implications of forbidden love between a vampire and a human. So much death and sacrifice ensues just because a human and a vampire could not be together, and Bella had to risk so much to attempt to become a vampire and join him. This emphasizes how society doesn’t accept the union of two seen as too different to become one. Instead, Bella had to change herself for any hope of being with Edward, and suffer the repercussions that the change would bring.
And that is only a handful of titles across several varied genres. Be it teen fiction, postcolonial literature, or even children’s fantasy, it is clear to see love laws have a place in all of them, yet the effects are greatly varied. Upon looking deeper into The Selection, Twilight, and God of Small Things, we can note the differences between how love laws affect the worlds of Twilight and The Selection, in contrast with the world of God of Small Things. In the two novels set in fantasized versions of our country, love laws focused more on what was acceptable for social norms, what creates a good and proper image of a perfect, ascetically pleasing society; whereas in God of Small Things, love laws were a symbol of imperialistic control in its most brutal force, the caste system a jagged chain. The rules of the society, the culture, tangled with the imperialist, dictating who should be loved and how much were a glorified way of asserting their power to colonize the native, and influence the hybrid culture of a race they look down upon.
Love Laws in Classic Fiction
Chances are that even if you aren’t reading a love story, there is a hint of love somewhere. What love is, who should be loved, and why has been a question asked by many.
Many old stories involving kings and knights, jousting and dragons or any other mythical beasts, often involve a love interest as a prize or someone whose love is worth fighting for. For knights however, the women who they fought for would be an unattainable love interest. These relationships, sometimes referred to as ‘courtly love’, were never supposed to evolve beyond longing. The knight in such a relationship couldn’t cross the line from courtly love to real love, to do so was considered taboo. The most popular of these courtly love stories told time and time again, is that of Guinevere and Lancelot. Guinevere, King Arthur’s wife, and Lancelot, one of Arthur’s trusted knights, fell into a romance that could only end in disaster. They crossed the line, and eventually were almost put to death for breaking these laws. This line crossing, a crossing of accepted borders, is a trope found across time and country. Such as the ill-fated Lancelot and Guinevere, Velutha and Ammu of The God of Small Things crossed a love border, leading to his untimely death. Regardless of culture or time-period, the love that is accepted where you are will either bring you joy, or a miserable existence and sometimes, an unfortunate death.
For as long as love has been accepted people have found ways to make love unacceptable, and it is one of the biggest tropes in story history. Whether your love is forbidden because of class, race, religion or family differences, it can be difficult to bridge those gaps and the outcome can either end happily or in disaster. Another popular story that fits this trope to the T is Romeo and Juliet. The Capulets and the Montagues were bitter enemies, and when the children of these families fell in love they had to fight against the hatred that had been building for centuries. These two children took a chance at the love they wanted, but in a short, ill-fated love affair Romeo and Juliet end in thinking they have no choice but to take their own lives than be separated.
Love had given them a fulfillment they, while probably misunderstanding, had not had before and so they risked everything for it. In much the same manner, the children of Ammu, twins Estha and Rahel, are separated and can only feel pain at the loss of the other from their lives. When reunited, their relationship is cold and distant and it is only by enacting another sort of forbidden love, incest, that they can take any comfort from the other’s form again.
Love Laws in Our Reality
Love is such a complex word with a variety of different meanings. It is impossible for love to have one single definition while it has positive and negative connotations tied to it. Therefore, with love being such a controversial word there are going to be laws connected to it. There are laws dictating who we can love and what amount of love is acceptable. Love laws have been around since the beginning of societies and are well embedded in ours now.
The typical love story is boy meets girl, they fall in love and live happily ever after. This is the love law that is most widely accepted in our society, but what about other love stories? Love stories including polygamy, gay marriage, and interracial relationships are ones that are looked down upon and discriminated. If you are not involved in a fairy tale romance fitting into boy meets girl, where is your place? There are relationships that do not have a place in society.
Out of many frowned upon relationships one that has sparked interest across the nation is polygamy. The laws claim it is morally unacceptable. It does not fit into the boy meets girl fairy tale because there is more than one girl within the relationship. Not all polygamous relationships result in harming children or forcing them to marry against their will, this is the stigma that is stuck to polygamy. If a woman can choose to marry a man, she can also choose to marry a woman, but if she decides to marry a man who has other wives it is unacceptable. Regardless of the opinions it is the woman’s choice if that is what she wants for love. TLC’s reality show, Sister Wives, has sparked interest across the country with the story of Kody Brown and his four wives Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robin. The show looks inside their day to day life with eighteen children. Kody and his wives claim they agreed to participate in the show to promote awareness and acceptance about polygamy and to fight the prejudices that stem from society’s norms. The show portrays the struggles within their everyday lives and how they try to overcome it. Even though there is much disdain for their lifestyle, the family still finds happiness…with 2.2 million viewers. But, polygamy isn’t just practiced in the United States. It is still legally acceptable in other cultures around the world. Some Muslim cultures still allow a husband to have up to four wives, but it is not talked about or on the news like the Brown family. Why is it in American culture, that this show is romanticized? One answer could be that the U.S. is more accepting of relationships than other parts of the world, but the main reason could be that women do not have a choice to join polygamy like American women. In certain Muslim countries, polygamy is not practiced at all, while others have the belief that Muslim women are property, and although some gains have been made to diminish this view, it is still a constant struggle in certain areas. This displays the extremes on the Love Law spectrum and begs the question of where to draw the line.
Interracial relationships are still facing societal prejudices across the world. There has been progress over the years of acceptance starting from 1967 with the Supreme Court ruling that interracial marriage is legal, but there are still stigmas tied to them. The odd thing is, the opposite happens in God of Small Things. An interracial relationship is favored over a same race relationship in the novel. There are two powerful, controversial relationships that include Chacko and Margaret, and Ammu and Velutha. A big difference between their relationships was that only one was forbidden. Ammu and Velutha were in different levels of a class system, causing the relationship to be doomed from the start. The caste system was not brought by the British, it was instilled in their culture from the beginning. Chacko and Margaret were from different levels as well, but their relationship was acceptable in that society. The most distinct difference in the relationships was that Margaret was white. By her being white, it romanticized the relationship. There are societies that emphasize only same race relationships, while others accept and even encourage interracial relationships.
What we must understand is that different cultures have different moral codes. Or different societies have different love laws. It is easy to stand on the sidelines judging each culture’s practices and beliefs. But how do we know our beliefs are morally sound? Right and wrong are only matters of opinion. Our own way of living seems so natural and right that it is hard to conceive others living differently. When we judge a love that is different from ours, we are applying our standards of love to it, so we believe our individual beliefs about love is the only correct one. To make a change to society’s love laws, we can only change ourselves in order to transform the world.
Now that we have analyzed love laws in classic and modern fiction, as well as in the in the tangible reality of our own country, it has left us with a very disconsolate, overcast discovery. It is plain that the postcolonial, imperialistic, settler- inspired “love laws” have roots in everything. They influence the plotline of popular, current fiction, they exist in the shadow of what is culturally acceptable for romantic relationships today in our reality, and they even have traces of imposing force in the classic fiction of the past. The extent of their influence and the severity of their effects varies by race, culture, and timeline. They are imposed in harsh regulations, caste systems, and shameful discrimination, and there is no limit to the suffering their subjects face should they choose to disobey. By our examination of all these variations though, one other note is also clear: no matter how varied and plentiful love laws are, no matter how brutal the punishment of breaking them may be, their subjects will never fully adhere to them. Every story of both classic and modern origin, each example of our current reality, tells the tale of those who dare to challenge the rule. However society will not accept them, however the colonialist will punish and rebuke, the subjects of these love laws will find ways around them, and never cease trying to be the exceptions to the rule.
