In William Goldman's “The Princess Bride”, the representation of love and marriage has challenged my values, through the unidealised reasons to why couples get married, the long-term unromantic relationship between Buttercup’s parents and the rather fast development of Buttercup and Westley’s love. Prince Humperdinck and Princess Buttercup’s relationship presents the idea that some people will settle for less than true love and get married, challenging my values of love and marriage. Goldman has presented the Prince as a self centred patriarch, who only decided to marry once an heir to the throne was at stake.
This concept challenges my values because he is not marrying her for the love but for what's in it for himself. “ ‘I’ll never love you’, ‘I wouldn’t want it if I had it’,
...‘Then by all means, let us marry’”. (pg44) represents how Princess Buttercup and the Prince are blatantly stating that this marriage will be based only on an agreement between the two. Representing how they only place value in the actual joining of 2 people not the love behind this union. This goes against my values as a reader because I feel that marriage should only be shared between two people that love each other.
William Goldman’s “The Princess Bride” challenges my value of love and marriage from the negative representation of what it actually means to most people. The relationship between Buttercup’s parents is presented in an unromantic nuptial that challenges my values of love and marriage. The mother and father do not actually love each other, but act as if they are bitter rivals who only want to get the bette
of each other, “Buttercup’s parents did not have a happy marriage, all they could ever dream about was leaving each other”.
This challenges my values because if i was in a marriage i would want to spend my every hour with them, not dreaming about wanting to leave them. Generally when people are in a marriage it’s because they want to be and because they are in love with their other half. This is not the case with Buttercup’s parents, with their marriage held on by a thread. Their relationship has now been boiled down to scored fights about nothing. “After spats, and he was behind, thirteen to twenty”.
This relationship challenges my values of love and marriage by making me realise what long term relationships can do to a couple and how they see their new state of normalcy. Buttercup and Westley’s relationship shown in “The Princess Bride” presents a fake romance and challenges my value of love. Buttercups feeling towards Westley grew to a very strong point in just a matter of hours. “I love you so much more than twenty minutes ago”. (pg30-31)This presents an unrealistic romance between the two and challenging my meaning of how true love grows in a relationship.
True love should grow over a longer period of time, and spending more time with that person makes that love greater, not sitting in your room thinking about him. When Westley finds out that the love of his life loves him as well, he packs up and leaves. “I’m leaving for America”. (pg32) Again presenting an unrealistic twist to this to this postmodern fairy tale, that makes
me wonder the extent of his love towards Buttercup. Normally once one has found their everlasting love they would want to hold them close to their heart, irritating my understanding for true love and how it works.
William Goldman in this story puts forward the notion that love is stronger than anything, even death. Proving this by ‘killing’ Westley twice and bringing him back, all so he can save the love of his life, Buttercup, twice. The Princess Bride challenges my values of love in an unrealistic turn of events. Goldman’s representation of love and marriage in “The Princess Bride” is presented in an unrealistic, unromantic and unidealised way. Challenging my values and giving this postmodern story some unexpected twists to what I would expect from a fairytale.
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