At This Moment

This Week Dominique Gauvard and Emily Carman asked BC students and faculty, What's your favorite romantic scene from a novel?

"Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights--when they die."
- Irena Bruza

"There's this scene in my favorite contemporary romance/coming-of-age novel, Anthropology of an American Girl by H.T. Hamann, where the protagonist is walking out of the garage and sees the guy she's falling for standing out in the rain. They hardly know each other and she's seeing someone else, so there are many boundaries to be crossed. No words are exchanged. Longing hangs in the air. He walks into the doorway of the garage, soaked to the bone. She wants him to make the first move, but he's too virtuous to touch her. Instead, he hands her a flower then walks back into the rain. It reminds me of one of my favorite lines in a movie, "What's better than kissing on the first date? Almost kissing on the first date." It gets to me every time."
- Maria Elizabeth Rubio

"In Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, when Rhett is so stricken with grief at his daughter's death that the whole town is cloaked in his sadness and everybody grieves for one little girl. It is such a touching scene, but oddly comforting to know that a bond of love can run that deep."
- Krishna Sury

"At the end of Ann Beattie's novel Chilly Scenes of Winter, Charles' ex-girlfriend Laura says that she will make him his favorite dessert. It's not your typical "Hollywood" ending, it's unconventional, yet optimistic."
-Emma Wunsch

"In Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ... When Jesus reflects on what his marriage to Mary Magdalen would be like. I found it romantic seeing a man weigh his love for a person versus his love of god or his father."
- Pietro Scorsone

"I know it's not necessarily romantic, but in Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man when he sees the Muse..."
- Ilana Zaken

"When Achilles killed Hector in Homer's The Iliad and dragged his dead body around for three weeks because he killed Achilles' 'man-friend' Patroklos."
- Emanuel Bennett

"When Noah and Allie go on their first date in Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook."
- Jennifer Sternberg

"When Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy get together in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice."
- Shawn Simpson-Smith