Exploring the Complexity of Love and Happiness

The Four Letter Word

It’s the butterflies deep in your stomach, the smile that cannot leave, and the rapid heartbeat that pounds; it is love. This extremely complex, yet quite simple four letter word also carries around an innate feeling of happiness. The beginning of this deeply rooted connection between love and the idea of living “happily ever after” started as a child with the fairy tales I would read. Despite the fact that fairy tales and fables are fictitious, the components that make up “happily ever after” are actually scientifically proven to be true. According to a 75-year longitudinal study completed by Harvard researchers, “the key to a happy and fulfilled life, is indeed love” (Firestone). But does love automatically mean “happily ever after”? And can you achieve happiness without love? The complexity of love itself is in need of consideration. One must think about the definitions of love, whether it be love for oneself or the love for others, and how the singular and combined power of these emotional states can play a part in the pursuit of happiness. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, and George Eliot’s Silas Marner, the inquiry on whether happiness is determined by the love

we receive is less of a question, but more of a statement. Although expressed differently in each novel, the notion of the pursuit of happiness is more or less the same.

Both time, love, and happiness play hand in hand in Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs.

Dalloway. Throughout the novel, there is a continuum of time passing as well as a continuum of going back into pass time. This yoyoing of time travel is influenced by flashbacks from an age of love, compassion, and happiness. Clarissa Dalloway, finds herself thinking about the past because that was when she was most happy. At her current state she does not receive the love from her husband, Richard, as she once thought she would many years back. To her, the memories of her summers flings and romances, still bring back the exact feelings she once experienced long before. One of her most memorable memories being the time Sally Seton kissed

her:

She and Sally fell a little behind. Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told to just keep it, not to look at it - a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling! (Woolf 35)

While happiness is a emotional characteristic, love can be thought of as either emotional or physical. It is apparent that Clarissa truly cherished this memory with Sally. Her way of recollecting the event is so vivid and the diction that she uses is so concise, that it only furthers her expression of joy and happiness when Sally kissed her. Woolf’s contrast in Clarissa’s youthful self to her current self shows a shift in her love life and happiness. The way that Clarissa describes her early age is with hope, excitement, and compassion. In comparison to this, Clarissa's current circumstance is not one that holds similar characteristics. It is easily inferred that she is not happy with the love life that she has with her husband Richard, and in order for her to feel happy she refers back to her youthful days when she was in and received love.
Like Clarissa, Peter Walsh also flashbacks to the past, to the time to when he was in love with Clarissa. However, unlike Clarissa's remembrance of when she was in love and happy, Peter looks back at the time when he loved Clarissa and she couldn’t reciprocate the same feelings. Even in the present the pain of her rejected still pains him as it did so long ago,
At once he became extremely depressed. It all seemed useless- going on being in love; going on quarrelling; going on making it up…
He grew more and more gloomy, not about that only; about everything. And he couldn’t see her; couldn’t explain to her; couldn’t have it out. There were always people about - she’d go on as if nothing had happened. That was the devilish part of her- this coldness, this woodenness, something very profound in her, which he felt again this morning talking to her; an impenetrability. Yet Heaven knows he loved her, which he had felt again this morning talking to her. She had some queer power of fiddling on one’s nerves, turning one’s nerves to fiddle-strings, yes. (59)

After being away in India and not seeing Clarissa for so long, when Peter returns back to England, his emotions toward Clarissa remain intact. He remembers the love that he once had with her, and relives being rejected by her. He can’t help b?ut continually return to the past in order to make sense of their relationship, a relationship that he once adorned for “heaven knows he loved her”.
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In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf was able to to reiterate the idea that happiness is dependent on the love we receive by showing distinction within the emotional impact of being in love and with being without it. Clarissa Dalloway's as well as Peter Walsh’s role in this was to confirm this notion, by relaying the discomfort and unhappiness that follows an unloved heart.

In Nella Larsen’s Passing, the interaction between love and happiness is less obvious. Unlike Mrs. Dalloway, Passing encompasses love with oneself more than love with another. For Irene Redfield, race is very complexed. While she can pass as white woman, she chooses to stay true to who she is and identifies with the black community. The ability of being seen as two entirely different people - one being white, one being black - has its negative side effects. To begin with, it conjures a lack of identity. During that time period, the color of your skin determined the way you are regarded in a society. Irene’s lack of structured self only made it more difficult to find happiness with herself and happiness in her marriage. When Irene is reintroduced to an old acquaintance, Clare Kendry, it resurrects this struggle that she has with her own being:

Sitting alone in the quiet living room in the pleasant firelight, Irene Redfield wished, for the first time in her life that she had not been born a Negro. For the first time she suffered and rebelled because she was unable to disregard the burden of race. It was she cried silently, enough to suffer as a woman, an individual, on one’s own account, without having to suffer for the race as well. It was a brutality, and undeserved. Surely no other people so cursed as Ham’s dark children. (Larsen 258)

This quote represents a change in Irene’s earlier attitudes towards her race. Throughout passing, Irene had materialized displeasure towards Clare’s alacrity to cloak her racial roots - and had desired to make place for herself and her child in the Harlem community. The strain Clare’s presence has put on Irene marriage and life, has put Irene over the edge. As Clare eagerly embraces life in Harlem, Irene has to “for the first time in her life” question and wish to relinquish the sense of community that has comforted her for so long. Larsen incorporates this tug of war with one's acceptance of self to reiterate happiness is determined by the love we receive, and for Irene Redfield this love is the love she gives to herself.

A little more light hearted than Passing, Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey holds the notion of “happily ever after” quite close. Through Austen’s use of plot she is able to create a modernized version of the fairy tale ending. Whilst Austen’s work critics and comments on the British gentry, it also displays her views on love and its correlation to happiness. When Austen brings Catherine Morland to Bath, she immediately begins the love story. During her first night, when Catherine is introduced to Henry Tilney, sparks fly and their happiness develops with one another. After much time spent together over the summer, the two begin to fall in love, but like all fairytales there must be a climax; a turn of unfortunate events. Henry’s Father, General Tilney, sends Catherine back to her home as he believes she in love with Henry for the family fortune. It is in this instance when Austen’s critiques of the gentry and views on love intersect one another. As readers we sympathize for Catherine as her heart is broken, but this sympathy veils the unseen reasons for the Generals wrath. After losing his wife, the General has become notably unhappy. His wealth and children are all that he has, so the vexation that the General lashed out on Catherine was less out of hatred and more out of love for the wellbeing of his children. Austen ,however, finds a resolution to this conflict and turns unhappiness back into happiness with fairytale ending of marriage,

Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang and everybody smiled; and as this took place within a twelvemonth from the first day of their meeting, it will not appear, after all the dreadful delays occasioned by the General’s cruelty, that they were essentially hurt by it. To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to the felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment. (Austen 179)

At the conclusion of it all, Henry and Catherine do have a “happily ever after” ending. Throughout the entire piece of Northanger Abbey, Austen plays on nuances of false judgement and conflict, as well as, happiness and love to bring a sense of reality to the work. The notion that happiness is dependent on the love we receive is seen on all accounts of this novel by Austen's ability to put her own twist on fairy tales, as well as, staying true to her work of criticizing and commenting on the British Gentry.