Real Adventure, The |
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| Name of Work | Real Adventure, The | ||
| Production Date | 1915 | ||
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Description
A young woman (Rose) and man (Rodney) fall in love on sight, and marry soon thereafter. Since he is wealthy and a very successful lawyer, they live in high society. Rose comes to realize she is more a mistress than an equal partner with her husband in their life. She realizes that until she can be on an equal footing with him -- to be his friend, as well as his lover -- they will grow apart and live an empty life like so many of their fancy friends. She radically separates from him, in order to create a persona for herself that will be an equal match to his brilliance.
Theme
Creating your *self* is the only way to live.
Emotional Sum or Sense-of-life
Life is wonderful as long as you realize that life has to be earned the hard way.
Context Information
Tags
love story
Discussion
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My ReactionsI think this novel by Webster is better in many respects to "Calumet K". They are quite different, but "The Real Adventure is a more serious work. The reason is the complex psychological writing in the book. This book is both a topnotch example of romantic realism, because it is both a preeminent novel of realism, as well as being intensely intensely romantic, in that the whole theme and plot-theme is about will and volition. (It's also romantic in the other sense, in that the story line is entirely related to the romance of a somewhat free-spirited lawyer and his even more spirited wife.) The book may also be considered a psychological suspense novel because it is intensely psychological -- all about creating a self, a well-developed adult self, while the structure of the novel is a thriller in the sense of being held in suspension about how this long-ranging development will work out. It's also slyly a women's movement novel (in its original good sense of pro-individual-women's-right to live an independent life). In style, it is somewhat uneven, because there are times it seems to lapse into a simple mindset about psychological types, but that is definitely a minority of the time. Whereas the majority of the book is quite sophisticated psychologically.