Although they're deeply in love, conflict
interrupts their plans to be together, and the lovers part. Time passes,
often several years. Both build separate lives, careers, maybe even other
marriages, but neither is ever really happy. When they meet again, their
earlier conflict seems to have eased away. They try to get together again,
but the conflict may be real, or their newly found happiness, always tinged
with regret, may be threatened by other factors. Will true love fail yet
again, or will the lovers overcome all obstacles to be together?
What's The Appeal?
Love and devotion are considered more or less as ideals, but in a romance
with this theme, the ideal is subject to the frailties of human personality.
Family objections, differences in background, intricacies of other
relationships, any number of overwhelming forces separate the lovers.
Nevertheless, as readers and Shakespeare believe, "Love's not Time's
fool…and alters not when alteration finds."
When they meet again,
the past or the separation presents the main obstacle to their love. This
shifts the plot from the nuances of falling in love to recovery of lost
love. Passion is intensified by memory and by deferred longing. In the more
usual boy-meets-girl romance pattern, passion is like a rudder guiding the
lovers through powerful and conflicting currents. In the Reconciliation
pattern, that guidance failed for some reason and now love becomes more a
condition of hope, a place where memories of the heart can still recover
meaning.
As old conflicts, and new problems, are worked out, the reader
enjoys the affirmation that love is constant, an ever-fixed mark that looks
on tempests and is never really shaken. There is no mistake, no weakness,
however serious it seems, that love cannot ultimately forgive. True love
wins, yet again proving its strength and stability in a complex world of
opposition and difficulty.
Authors' Thoughts...
Kathleen Eagle:
"Reconciliation is a theme that lends itself
to depth of character. It takes us to the 'ever after' part of love, the
times of trial, growth, change, redemption and forgiveness, where we
discover the true power of the heart." LaVyrle Spencer's Bygones is a
good example of the reconciliation theme that Kathleen recommends.
Linda Francis Lee:
"I love a story that brings characters back
to someone they loved and lost. While in many ways they have to start over
again, the characters have a shared past that adds an intensity that is more
intimate than if they had just met." Linda recommends Something
Wonderful by Judith McNaught as a lovely example of reconciliation.
Bertrice Small:
"Reconciliation novels are wonderful because
they allow you to tie up all the loose ends and give the reader and the
heroine a happily ever after." One of Bertrice's favorite stories featuring
reconciliation is Angelique in Revolt, the fourth book in the classic
Angelique series by the husband/wife writing team of Sergeanne Golon.
Reconciliation explores the challenge of love the second time around,
after the hero and heroine have parted once already. Now, with old wounds
and broken hearts comes the hardest part of love›forgiveness. In
reconciliation stories, love is not a clean slate, but a past that holds
both the ties and the obstacles for the present relationship.
-Constance Martin
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