Annetti's love (An analysis of love styles in the novel of L'Ame enchantéel according to Sternberg's theories)

The notion of love is one of the recurring themes in world literature. With the aim of investigating the Love-making styles in the relationships of the characters in The novel L'Ame enchantée, the two theories of Sternberg, American psychologist: "love triangle" and "love as a story" have been utilized as the criteria of measurement. This research is a theoretical study, in a library style, which was conducted with analytical-descriptive method. The scope of the research is addressing the first part of the novel translated by Mahmoud Etemadzadeh, which was published by Doostan Publishing House. The hypothesis of the research is the possibility of examining and explaining the styles of Love-making based on the aforementioned theories. Paying attention to the internal and external factors affecting love, in describing relationships and creating debates between characters to clarify their inner stories and attitude towards love is a recurring method in this story. Precisely, it can be considered as the author's special style. He has expressed the characteristics of the two components of intimacy and excitement from the three components of love which defines the three types of love, Liking, Infatuated love and Companionate love. We can see a number of love stories: Art, House and Home, Game, Religion, Sacrifice, teacher-student, Travel, Dream story.
Introduction:
This article, after introducing "Romain Rolland" and his novel "L'ame enchantée", according to Sternberg's theories (i.e. triangular theory of love and love as a story) analyzes the love styles of the characters, especially "Annette", the main character of the story. In the first part of this great novel, titled "Annette and Sylvie", a number of romantic challenges and faced which should be examined so as to answer a few questions in this article;
Is it possible to provide an explanation for these romantic challenges using Sternberg's psychological theories about love?
What are the components of love in the first part of the novel "L'ame enchantée"?
Which types of love are mentioned in this part of the novel?
According to Sternberg's theories, what kind of love stories are we dealing with?
Methodology:
The scope of the research addressed the first part of the novel "L'ame enchantée". The elements and characteristics of Annette's romantic relationships, in this part, have been matched and analyzed with two theories about love from Sternberg; "The Triangular theory of love", and "love as a story". Last but not least, the presented research follows a descriptive-analytical procedure which has utilized a library method for data collection.
Results and Discussion:
"L'ame enchantée" is one of the best fiction works of the 21st century by the great French writer "Romain Rolland". By dealing with diverse aspects of the characters in the novel, he expresses their attitude towards human values (especially love) and shows the impact of various social and religious factors on it. It is the story about one of the first modern French women, Annette Riviere; who stands in front of narrow-mindness and wrong and old thoughts of his people in order to have an independent life. The novel takes place in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. At the beginning of the story, we meet Annette who has lost her mother and now her father and her prosperous life and facing many problems.
Sternberg presented The Triangular theory of love in the late 1980s, which methodically stated the components of love. According to the presented theory, love has three components: (a) intimacy, which encompasses the feelings of closeness, connectedness, and boundedness to be experienced by individuals in love relationships (b) passion, which encompasses the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation, and (c) decision/commitment, which encompasses, in the short term, the decision that one loves another, and in the long term, the commitment to maintain that love". (Sternberg, 1986, 119). The intimacy component refers to those feelings in a relationship that promotes closeness, bonded ness, and connectedness that it includes, among other things, feelings of (a) desire to promote the welfare of the loved ones, (b) experienced happiness with the loved one, (c) high regard for the loved one, (d) being able to count on the loved one in case requireds, (e) mutual understanding with the loved one, (f) Sharing of one's self and one's possessions with the loved one, (g) receipt of emotional support from the loved one, (h) giving of emotional support to the loved one, (i) intimate communication with the loved one, and (j) valuing the loved one in one's life (Sternberg & Grajek, 1984).The passion component of love comprises those motivational and other sources of arousal that lead to the experience of passion. In a loving relationship, "sexual needs may well predominate in this experience. The other needs, such as those for self-esteem, nurturance, affiliation, dominance, submission, and self-actualization, may also contribute to experiencing passion. The decision/commitment component of love consists of two aspects, a short-term one and a long-term one. The short-term one is the decision that one loves a certain other. The long-term aspect is the commitment to maintain that love. (Sternberg, 1986, 122). These three components can be combined and, according to the amount of each component, create different types of love, which are named as: Non love, Liking, Infatuated love, Empty love, Romantic love, Companionate love, Fatuous love, Consummate love.
In the mid-nineties, Sternberg proposed the theory of "Love as a Story" and tried to find an answer to the question of why a person falls in love with a certain person and does not fall in love with another. This theory states that everyone has a story or stories for love. "Love", as a matter of fact, is a story that individuals are the authors of. The main point of this theory is that we unintentionally fall in love with people whose stories are exactly like our story or similar to it, but the role of that person in his story complements our role in our story. Annette's romantic relationships are formed among her social relationships. She meets different people and has different experiences. Annette's relationships with her father, sister and some other young people were examined in this article.
Roland first creates a situation where a new character enters Annette's life story, then describes his occupational characteristics, appearance and physical charms to prepare the ground for love, then his family, social and describes his religion. IT makes the characters to face each other and find out each other's opinions and depth of feelings through long conversations; in a way, it creates a debate that is the product of the characters' attitude towards life and love.
We can consider Romain Rolland's way of dealing with various social, religious and even historical issues through the expression of different forms of love, his special style of thinking. He presents different forms of love and explains various issues that affect love. In each part of the novel, according to the cultural, social and religious status of the characters, he reveals their attitude towards love well, and in this regard, he uses the description of the details competently. "Rolan" considers the inner attitude of each person and the external factors in the way of making love. They shape the stories they consider for their love lives based on the insights and attitudes of their cultural, religious, family, and social environment and use different descriptions, discussions, and images. These stories can be explained by Sternberg's theory.
Conclusion:
All three components of "Sternberg's love triangle", i.e. intimacy, passion and decision/commitment, can be understood well in the author's way of expression. He displays the elements of "intimacy" component, especially secret telling, heartache and support in the behaviors, mentalities and long conversations between the characters.
In dealing with the emotion component, stimulating and motivating romantic behaviors such as looking, touching, kissing and hugging, which are elements of this component. He does not forget the existence of the "commitment" component is more dependent on the type of insight and attitude of people than the other two elements; therefore, due to the difference in the type of social vision of the characters, the element of commitment can be found less in their relationships. Roland describes and narrates various types of love including "liking", "infatuation" and "Companionate love" among the characters.
The romantic stories were identified in this part of the novel based on the theory of "love as a story"; they include "The Game story", "The Art story", "Object story" (House and home story), "The Religion story", "The Sacrifice story", "The Travel story", "The Teacher and Student story" and "The Fantasy story". The multiplicity of these stories in the novel shows the author's broad insight and his knowledge of the society he has addressed in the novel.