Introduction
English literature has persistently explored the paradoxical coexistence of love and hate within intimate relationships. Rather than presenting emotion as stable or harmonious, many English novels depict love as inseparable from resentment, fear, domination, and moral disillusionment. This emotional duality reflects the psychological and social tensions embedded within human relationships, particularly when love intersects with power, obsession, and unfulfilled desire. In Frankenstein (1818), Rebecca (1938), and The Great Gatsby (1925), love and hate operate not as opposites but as interdependent forces that structure narrative conflict and character psychology. Through these novels, English fiction interrogates intimacy as a site of emotional struggle, revealing how affection can mutate into hostility when distorted by ego, social pressure, or unattainable ideals.
Emotional Creation and Rejection in Frankenstein
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley presents one of the most complex emotional relationships in English literature: that between creator and creation. Victor Frankenstein’s initial fascination with scientific creation is driven by a desire for glory and mastery rather than compassion. When the Creature comes to life, Victor’s love for achievement immediately transforms into disgust and hatred. This emotional reversal establishes the novel’s central conflict.
The Creature, initially benevolent and longing for affection, internalizes rejection as emotional trauma. His plea—“I ought to be thy Adam”—reveals his desire for relational belonging rather than dominance. However, sustained emotional abandonment converts his love into vengeful hatred. Shelley thus portrays hate not as an inherent moral flaw but as the psychological consequence of denied intimacy.
The novel critiques Enlightenment ideals of rational mastery by demonstrating how emotional irresponsibility produces ethical catastrophe. Love without accountability becomes destructive, while hatred emerges as a distorted response to isolation. Shelley’s exploration of emotional conflict anticipates modern psychological theories of attachment and alienation, positioning Frankenstein as a foundational text in the literature of emotional fracture.
Obsession, Jealousy, and Identity in Rebecca
Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca presents love and hate as deeply intertwined within marriage and memory. The unnamed narrator’s relationship with Maxim de Winter is marked by emotional dependency, insecurity, and unspoken resentment. Love, in this novel, is neither nurturing nor transparent; it is mediated through secrecy and psychological manipulation.
Maxim’s hatred of his first wife coexists paradoxically with the enduring power of her presence. Rebecca’s memory dominates the narrative, shaping emotional landscapes long after her death. The narrator’s love for Maxim is contaminated by jealousy and fear, revealing how intimacy becomes oppressive when built on silence and imbalance.
Du Maurier exposes the gothic dimensions of emotional power, where love functions as control and hatred as repression. The novel destabilizes romantic ideals by revealing marriage as a psychological battleground. Here, love does not liberate identity but erases it, particularly for women confined within patriarchal emotional economies.
Idealized Love and Moral Disillusionment in The Great Gatsby
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald presents love as an illusion sustained by desire and nostalgia. Jay Gatsby’s devotion to Daisy Buchanan is obsessive and idealized, rooted not in reality but in memory and aspiration. Love becomes an emotional projection rather than a reciprocal bond.
Daisy, in turn, embodies emotional ambivalence—capable of affection yet constrained by social privilege and moral indifference. Gatsby’s love, when confronted with Daisy’s limitations, curdles into despair. Hate in this novel is subtle and structural: it appears as bitterness toward class barriers, emotional emptiness, and the corruption of the American Dream.
Fitzgerald critiques modernity’s hollow emotional promises. Love, stripped of ethical substance, becomes destructive rather than redemptive. The emotional conflict of the novel reflects a broader cultural disillusionment, where desire is endlessly deferred and intimacy collapses under social artifice.
Comparative Analysis: Emotional Conflict and Power
Across these three novels, love and hate function as responses to emotional imbalance. In Frankenstein, the imbalance lies between creation and responsibility; in Rebecca, between memory and identity; and in The Great Gatsby, between idealization and reality. Each text reveals that when love is divorced from ethical commitment and emotional equality, it generates resentment and destruction.
These novels also expose the power dynamics embedded within intimacy. Whether scientific, marital, or social, power transforms affection into control and devotion into obsession. Hate, rather than existing as a moral opposite to love, emerges as its corrupted extension—an emotional response to betrayal, neglect, or unattainable longing.
Conclusion
English literature’s portrayal of love and hate as intertwined emotional forces reflects a profound understanding of human psychology and social constraint. Frankenstein, Rebecca, and The Great Gatsby dismantle sentimental notions of romance, replacing them with narratives of emotional conflict, power, and disillusionment. These novels argue that love without responsibility, transparency, or equality is inherently unstable.
By presenting intimacy as a site of struggle rather than harmony, English fiction invites readers to confront the ethical demands of emotional life. Love, these texts suggest, is not inherently redemptive; it becomes meaningful only when grounded in mutual recognition and moral accountability. In exposing the fragile boundary between affection and hostility, these novels continue to offer vital insights into the emotional complexities of human relationships.
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