Worst Literary Marriages: Our Top Picks

When we think about the most memorable couples in literature, most of us would probably name the pairs immortalized for their great romances--Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, Romeo and Juliet, Cathy and Heathcliff. But seriously, haven't they gotten enough attention? In our opinion, the more compelling (and realistic) literary relationships are the ones marked by conflict, violence, chaos, and, sometimes, irresistibly dark humor. Below, our favorite classic literary couples who perhaps should never have been coupled at all. Click through our picks below and add your own comments.

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"Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says appreciatively of Daisy Buchanan, the married object of his desire and affection. That simple quote summarizes the superficial relationships between the vapid socialites of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic American novella "The Great Gatsby." The loveless, though stable, marriage of beautiful, shallow Daisy and the highbrow bully Tom Buchanan parallels the amoral society in which they live: the couple is loyal only to their affluence and social influence and maintain their marriage for the sole purpose of sustaining their unrestrained materialism.

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"Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says appreciatively of Daisy Buchanan, the married object of his desire and affection. That simple quote summarizes the superficial relationships between the vapid socialites of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic American novella "The Great Gatsby." The loveless, though stable, marriage of beautiful, shallow Daisy and the highbrow bully Tom Buchanan parallels the amoral society in which they live: the couple is loyal only to their affluence and social influence and maintain their marriage for the sole purpose of sustaining their unrestrained materialism.

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ijustwannaregister said on 13 Monday 2011 pm30 1:56 pm: The answer to that is complex.

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Comments

[Carmel3727]

07:28 AM on 06/17/2011

So are we to assume that Charles Bovary deserved to die, and that Berthe Bovary deserved to be orphaned and sent to work for a living in a cotton mill, purely due to Emma's wish to "refuse passivity in her empty marriage to an astonishingly boring man"? Living an existential, authentic life is great for the one living it, until it all goes wrong (as it did in the book). But let's not forget that there are often innocent casualties who get swept up in it all and then discarded. Some might call it authenticity. Others may prefer selfishness and self-absorption.

[Darren J Cohen]

04:45 AM on 06/15/2011

Clark Kent should have never married Lois Lane, who only ever loved the publicity surrounding Superman. He should have married Lana Lang, who loved Clark Kent, dammit!

[Mum]

04:33 AM on 06/15/2011

Some interesting takes on marriage:

"Howards End" and "A Passage to India"  -  E. M. Forster
"Mr. Bridge" and "Mrs. Bridge  -  Evan S. Connell
"The Yellow Wallpaper"  -  Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"The Awakening"  -  Kate Chopin
The Ripley novels  -  Patricia Highsmith
"The Pumpkin Eater"  -  Penelope Mortimer
"Call It Sleep"  -  Henry Roth
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"  -  Betty Smith
"The Blind Assassin"  -  Margaret Atwood
"Couples"  -  John Updike  (actually just about anything by Updike)
"Desperate Characters"  -  Paula Fox
"The Spectator Bird"  -  Wallace Stegner
"The Unbearable Lightness of Being"  -  Milan Kundera
"Fifth Business"  -  Robertson Davies  (the first of "The Deptford Trilogy")
The "Children of Violence" series by Doris Lessing (Especially the first three volumes:  "Martha Quest," "A Proper Marriage," and "A Ripple From the Storm"; the last two volumes are excellent, but there is less focus on the marriage(s) of the protagonist)

For some very light reading (along with some great recipes) Nora Ephron's "Heartburn."

And this isn't fiction, but it's a great "Portrait of a Marriage:  Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson" by Nigel Nicolson.

[Sir Leicester Dedlock]

09:42 PM on 06/14/2011

Oh, yes, and Jude and Arabella from Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

[Mum]

04:06 AM on 06/15/2011

And don't forget Sue Bridehead and Phillotson!

[Sir Leicester Dedlock]

09:37 PM on 06/14/2011

And we're missing the obvious: Othello and Desdemona. Or even Iago and Emilia.

[Mum]

04:07 AM on 06/15/2011

And there's always the Macbeths!

[Sir Leicester Dedlock]

09:34 PM on 06/14/2011

Let's not forget the marriage of Louis and Emily Trevelyan in Trollope's He Knew He Was Right

[ruthinking]

07:48 PM on 06/14/2011

Dorothea Brooke (Middlemar­ch) in her first marriage. Isabel Archer, Portrait of a Lady. Waiting for a bad choice of a husband to die is to live one's own death.

[calicanuck]

07:10 PM on 06/14/2011

The marriage in "Something Happened," that *other* great book by Joseph Heller is pretty soulless and bitter.

Also the relationship between Aristide Saccard and Renee in Emile Zola's "The Kill," or if you prefer "La Curee," is particularly duplicitous as it involves Renee's incest with Saccard's son Maxime. I know not many read Zola these days, but his books are full of marital misery of some sort or other so dive in!

[dahpunkster]

12:08 PM on 06/14/2011

the larkins in olive kitteridge they gave me chills

[dahpunkster]

12:06 PM on 06/14/2011

alice and her husband in mr. peanut

Julie powell and her husband cleaving
( I never wanted
to throw a book against the wall so bad

[trav45]

09:02 AM on 06/14/2011

Don't forget: Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, Pride and Prejudice. Walter and Mrs. Mitty, "Secret Life of Walter Mitty." Rochester and Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea.

[Ariel Gonzalez]

03:34 AM on 06/14/2011

Oh, and how could I forget? Tony and Brenda Last in Evelyn Waugh's "A Handful of Dust" (proof a novel can be simultaneously funny and horrifying).

[Ariel Gonzalez]

12:34 AM on 06/14/2011

Some of my favorite imaginary hellish unions:

1. The Captain and Laura in Strindberg's play, "The Father" (she drives him insane by casting doubt on the paternity of their daughter)
2. Harry Angstrom and Janice in Updike's "Rabbit, Run" (he's an irresponsible boy-man, she accidentally drowns their newborn).
3. Peter Tarnopol and Margaret in Philip Roth's "My Life as Man" (a self-hating Jewish writer marries a working-class shiksa; much misery ensues).
4. Raat and Rosa in Heinrich Mann's "Professor Unrat" (the inspiration for the Marlene Dietrich movie, "The Blue Angel"; if you've seen it, you know there's no happy ending).
5. John and Florence Dowell & Edward and Leonora Ashburnham ("This is the saddest story I have ever heard").

[Mum]

04:32 PM on 06/14/2011

Great choices, and you reminded me that I need to keep looking for my copy of "The Good Soldier."

[3423427]

10:40 PM on 06/13/2011

Madame Bovary is one of the most depressing books I've ever read. Yikes.

Isn't the character in gone with the wind supposed to be a nurse or something? All I remember about the movie was the scene (the only artistically decent one) that pans out with her standing in the middle of hundreds of amputees, all in pain and not being able to do anything about it. If I had to work on an orthopedic floor where the nurse : patient ratio was 1:50+ like that, and didn't have any pain medication to give out, I'd be a beast to my husband as well!

[Mum]

04:40 PM on 06/14/2011

I think you might be a bit confused: 

"Gone With the Wind"  -  Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler, Tara, Atlanta burning, Civil War, slavery, the KKK, tomorrow is another day

"A Farewell to Arms"  -  Frederic Henry (American ambulance driver), Catherine Barkley (the nurse, British), WWI, hospital in Italy, tragic ending

[smopenna]

09:43 PM on 06/14/2011

There's a famous scene in Gone With the Wind (film) where Scarlett has volunteered as a nurse in an army hospital and she's walking the streets of Atlanta and they're covered with wounded soldiers. I think that's what the original poster is referring to, anyway.

[Lev Raphael]

10:33 PM on 06/13/2011

BTW, I blogged here on HuffPo, tongue-in-cheek, about bad literary marriages a while back: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lev-raphael/marriage-and-lit_b_680550.html