The Changing Facets of American Novels of Romance: Interpreting the Creative Flux of Platonic Romance in Danielle Steel’s Safe Harbour versus Calvinist Romance in Marilynne Robinson’s Jack

Abstract

The paper critically focuses on the creative facets of romance in Danielle Steel’s Safe Harbour and Marilynne Robinson’s Jack. Safe Harbour virtually harbours on mutual faith between an American widow Danielle who is also a social worker and a divorcee form New Zealand named Matt, who happens to be an artist too. In the novel, the youngest daughter of Danielle performs angelic role to bring about a transformation in thoughts and beliefs leading to the union of her mother with Matt. It seems as if the romance between them is more of Platonic than anything else leading to carrying out humanitarian responsibilities. Jack is one of its unique kinds of literary writings based on the love between two young persons Jack and Della of the two well-known races
of America. With the backdrop of the controversy that juxtaposes racial problems and human attributes with the paradigm of Calvinist romance which advocates for the stability and security of a strict religious system in a world that he finds unstable and even absurd without it. It examines how the author has tactfully revealed the pre-ordained bond of love between the two characters leaving behind the so- called social and religious dogmas. There is a reference to Black Lives Matter in the novel admixed with racial trauma whereas in the thematic context, it repeatedly investigates the connection between loneliness and eternal damnation; the soul’s isolation and its torment.