The whole business of love and love-making and marrying is painted by the novelists in a monstrous disproportion to the other relations of life…In novels it’s treated, not only as if it were the chief interest of life, but the sole interest of the lives of two ridiculous young persons; and it is taught that love is perpetual, that the glow of a true passion lasts for ever; and that it is sacrilege to think or act otherwise.
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William Dean Howells From The Rise of Silas Lapham, a novel which pretty much still manages to contain all of the cliches listed above. |
