‘Writers are at their best when they acknowledge that relationships can have both positive and negative elements.’ How far do you agree?
The presentation of arguments within relationships is a significant example of writers acknowledging that relationships can have both positive and negative elements. There is a focus on the negative, the argument itself, but this demonstrates the lovers fighting for a positive relationship, thus providing interest for the reader. In her autobiographical collection ‘Rapture’ Duffy tracks the various stages of a relationship, including conflicts between the lovers. ‘Row’ is the 16th poem in the collection, therefore takes place chronologically towards the middle of the relationship, at a stage where the initial ‘spell’ like quality, as expressed in ‘You’, has faded slightly. The first line of ‘Row’, ‘But when we rowed’, suggests the poet persona comparing the rows of the lovers with the rest of their relationship, thus suggesting an internal conflict as the speaker struggles with both the positive and negative elements of the relationship. This perhaps portrays Duffy as a poet at her best, as she is highlighting the conflict within a relationship, both between the lovers and for each individual lover themselves. I would add to this that the anaphoric repetition of this line, ‘But when we rowed’, suggests the constancy of this conflict. This indicates a relationship which is not living up to the speakers earlier expectations of the lover as ‘a touchable dream’; the relationship is more complex than this, therefore arguably more interesting for the reader. The complexity of the relationship is further underlined through the subliminal message running through the poem through the initial word of each line. The lines of the first two stanzas start with ‘but…the…the…the’, portraying the back and forth nature of the arguments, yet the final stanza presents the message ‘but…your…my…love’. This subliminal message highlights the speaker as accepting their love as worth the negatives of the arguments, thus Duffy presents arguments and conflict as part of a positive relationship.Fitzgerald similarly presents arguments within relationships in his Jazz Age novel ‘The Great Gatsby’. Arguments between the lovers seem to come to a dramatic climax in New York in Chapter 7, when Gatsby announces that Daisy ‘was never in love with’ Tom. Until this point in the novel the reader gains very little information on the history of Tom and Daisy’s relationship, only perceiving them through the eyes of the unreliable narrator of Nick, who presents Tom as ‘cruel’ and ‘arrogant’ from the outset, thus tainting the readers interpretation of him. It is therefore interesting for the reader to learn details about the Buchanans’ marriage, such as ‘that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry’. Such insight means the reader is no longer able to ignore Tom and Daisy’s shared history, complicating the desired aim for the romantic unity of Daisy and Gatsby. This perhaps adds interest for the reader, showing Fitzgerald as an author at his best, as he is recognising that no relationship exists one-dimensionally, there are positive and negative elements to all.
