blueinkedfrost

This is a reasonably common nineteenth-century trope, though some of my examples below are twentieth-century. The story goes that a man falls in love with a woman, who rejects him in order to marry another man. She has a daughter. The man falls in love with the daughter and this time is successful in his suit.

Sometimes the trope's played with overt misogynistic disdain to the mother ('she turned down this nice protagonist guy because she was a shallow bitch, fortunately the 2.0 model in her daughter is much better made'), sometimes it's simply that the mother and the man weren't suited.

The obvious misogyny and creepiness that this older man deserves the beautiful girl young enough to be his daughter isn't lost on most people in the twenty-first century. There's an unpleasant implication that the mother is no longer attractive because she's lived her life and had a family, and that what a middle-aged or older man really needs is an virginal young woman who doesn't have any life experience to compare with him. As well, the incest squick often extends toward people who have had past romantic relationships with our blood relations, i.e. daughter dating mother's ex-boyfriend.

Age differences can, though don't always, mean power differentials as well. The power differentials can be especially strong if the man has been close to the young girl in her childhood as a family friend and adult authority figure, before pursuing her romantically when she hits puberty.

For some reason (sexism) this trope is much rarer in gender reversed form. A woman who once loved a man who married another hardly ever gets to marry his young son. The potential creepy factor for age and power differentials remains in the gender reversed version, but it would be great if more stories gave older women more agency in general.

Like any trope, there are ways to write this badly and ways to write it well. There are non-creepy ways to write it well. Two adults choosing to be with each other despite an age difference is very different from a creepy man grooming a child to grow into his bride. I'd never argue that all relationships with age differences are evil and wrong; there are plenty of real life counterexamples. It just depends on whether the writer can convincingly portray these two people as adults making a free and informed choice rather than one exploiting the other.

Here are some nineteenth century / early twentieth century literary examples:

• Fanny Fern wrote a novella called 'Fanny Ford'. A man is sent to prison and never gets to marry his fiancee; his fiancee marries another and dies in childbirth. The man adopts the orphaned child and marries her when she is seventeen. This is presented as good because the man's character reformed between his prison time and his bringing up the child. (To be fair, he didn't bring up the child himself so much as leave her with good people.)


• Mary Elizabeth Braddon's novel 'Milly Darrell' gives a variant on this trope with a young stepmother's stepdaughter falling for her stepmother's ex-boyfriend, thereby making the age difference much less.


• Mary E. Waller's novel 'A Cry in the Wilderness' features a deserted husband who falls in love with his wife's illegitimate daughter, partly because of her resemblance to her mother.


• L.M. Montgomery's short story 'The Education of Betty' uses the trope straight. The Emily series also depicts Emily becoming engaged to a contemporary of her father's, though Dean Priest is represented as more than a little creepy.


• The trope is considered in Eleanor H. Porter's 'Pollyanna Grows Up'. John Pendleton was rejected by Pollyanna's mother and lived a sad bachelor's life for a number of years. Pollyanna sees it as her duty to marry him if he wants her, though fortunately he doesn't. Especially given that Pendleton was considered a little too old for Pollyanna's mother.


• Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles uses a variation on the trope where the heroine's younger sister is expected to be her husband's next wife (although the legality of this is doubtful due to laws against marrying a deceased wife's sister).

And, to be fair, here's a nineteenth-century counterexample:

• In 'Manouevering' by Maria Edgeworth (published 1809), wealthy older baronet Sir John Hunter initially courts Mrs Palmer's nubile daughter Amelia, but marries the mother instead. However, Mrs Palmer is close to his age, not nearly old enough to be his mother.

And then there's the "I'm my own grandfather" joke - a man and a son fall in love with a mother and a daughter; the man marries the daughter and the son the mother. The son is now his father's father-in-law, making him his own grandad. It's fun!

Misinterpretations of Tess of the d'Urbervilles as not containing rape are one of my pet peeves.

Extremely charitably, I can interpret this failure in reading comprehension as coming from a well-intentioned place. It can be revolutionary for women to admit they like sex. If Tess liked sex with Alec d'Urberville née Stoke, then the problem is just society telling women they shouldn't like sex, isn't it?

Problems with this theory: Alec's power over Tess. Happy, fun, consensual sex does not come from a place where the woman is dependent on the man for her daily bread and that of her family - and where the cultural climate is highly misogynistic.

(Here are some literary counterexamples: I believe Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak had happy, fun, consensual sex. I believe Anthony Trollope's Furnivals had happy, fun, consensual sex. There is a huge difference.)( Read more... )