Why Love in Fiction Needs Darkness

When I thought about this darkness, I assumed I would have many things to say, but it took me almost fourteen minutes of staring into the blank pages to write even one sentence. If I have to give you my two cents for the thought, yes, I believe love in fiction does need darkness. Still, I wasn’t sure from which angle I should approach it: from the pure spiritual side, the purely fictional side, or from the subjective experience of the writer, or from the psychological path our society has taken.

My defence to believe in certain darkness is that we do tend to gravitate towards negative emotions. The thick and dense feeling that just sucks our soul. When Heathcliff marries Isabella solely to torment her and exact revenge on his love, and when Edgar comes to take Isabella home, she refuses to go, even though she knows she has nothing here but a broken heart, and he wants to cut everyone with his shards. Why do I remember it? Why is this plot etched even though I have read a hundred books? Because there is darkness to it.

The darkness doesn’t care what is right or wrong. It is intoxicated in its own density, the heaviness that sinks anyone who dares to carry it. Some modern audiences think that Heathcliff was toxic and, to some extent, I agree, but they are completely missing the point here because to treat love as a controlled stream that you can direct whichever direction you want to is simply a delusion. Love is a flood that comes, covers everything, destroys and makes its own path. When was the last time you heard that an intense break-up led to keying up the car, burning the clothes, stalking on social media, trying to create jealousy just to show off? And yet we demand that our heroes and heroines act rationally in love.

Don’t you think that, somewhat, Catherine, in a little subconscious corner of her heart, liked the darkness Heathcliff was ready to go into just because of her love? That someone was mad enough to burn the world just for HER. Don’t you think her EGO was somewhat satiated by this unhinged path of destruction? Ain’t we all pine for somebody who would cross heaven for her? Is this why it became a classic, because it touches the truth in ourselves, and we just don’t want to be loved, but loved in such a way that the world witnesses the madness?

If you go a little bit deeper into that darkness, we find self-harm and the physical manifestation of harm. I, too, contemplated suicide when I was in high school because I was too naïve and too deep in what I thought was love. I was ignored, rejected and somewhat manipulated, and it showed in my writing. That is why? I firmly believe that love in fiction needs darkness.

Darkness is the complete erasure of the self. The moment we enter a narrow lane, where one person is mistaken for the answer to all our happiness. It is the willingness to discard a precious life for that illusion, and readers recognise it because everyone has, at some point, felt like shit in love.

Darkness in love is not there to be admired. It is there to be recognised. It preserves the permission to touch obsession, humiliation, self-erasure, and alllllll the stupid things we do.

If a story starts with happiness, stays happy, the happy ending is not worth much. That is why love without darkness feels forgettable, and I am not talking about the smut here. Desire is not the problem. The problem is mistaking surface heat for depth.

I think, as the writer, we have to choose which level of darkness we are willing to explore. What the machine wants you to write may be healthy, but it is not always honest, and honesty, not morality, is what readers recognise in their bones. What love do you remember the most?