I’m not a well-read Gene Wolfe reader, so the answer may be obvious.
No spoilers to his other novels if possible, I plan to read them all.
I’m confused about the love interests for the main characters, and what that says about Gene’s perspective on love (if anything).
In BoTLS it seems like Silk only falls in love with Hyacinth because of the intervention of Kypris. And this seems to make him borderline obsessed with her. The way in which they fell in love feels artificial, forced. Their relationship seems unhealthy at times. Silk’s depth of love seems unreturned.
The Wizard Knight (I’m halfway through The Wizard) seems similar. Able falls in love through Disiri’s magic. He also seems borderline obsessed. Their relationship seems unhealthy multiple times throughout the story.
Am I understanding this correctly? Is the relationship authentic for some deeper reason I’m missing?
Any and all perspectives are appreciated.
I’m only halfway through The Wizard so no spoilers for that one if possible.
As someone who just finished wizard, definitely be patient with that relationship between Abel and Desiri. If something feels off about them (and by extension sev/Dorcas or the characters in botls) there's going to be a lot of subtext and you might not know all of it yet.
Gene has a lot to say about love but the main characters aren't going to be directly emblematic of it. His storytelling is not that straightforward.
The Able/Disiri relationship is complicated, and you need to at least finish the book before trying to get at it. Just enjoy the story for now.
Wolfe likes to deconstruct classic tropes. On the surface it looks like the cliche “love at first sight” obsession, but over time you realize there is something else going on.
In The Matrix, Neo says he doesn't believe in fate; he is in control of his own life and destiny. The Oracle chuckles, gives him a cookie (program) and makes him break a vase. Wolfe characters are often like this. They act as though they are independent agents but higher powers are controlling their actions every step of the way.
Without spoilers, just wait until you get to Short Sun. The narrator has...fascinating perspectives on love.
I think the Silk/Hyacinth/Kypris triangle is most people's interpretation of what's going on there. There's a lot more about their relationship that you will learn about later too, and the same goes for Disiri and Able.
It seems artificial/forced to us, but is falling in love with someone because of the "divinity" within them less authentic than noticing that lady with the nice set of "Kyprises" across the bar and asking her for a dance? I think Wolfe understands love as a process, not a state of being.
Silk doesn't only fall in love with Hy owing to intervention of Kypris. If she didn't get involved, she would have been his "love" choice. His mother, we learn, was a virago, a devil, a demon in the house, a madwoman in the attic -- that was the kind of woman the old calde went for. Silk unconsciously sought someone out whom by always having to be a nurse/caretaker too, meant he would simultaneously be nursing some own aspect of himself, for at some level he understood himself as neglected and used.
He also chose someone who would never leave him, and Hy, for being so badly used by men, including her father, had in the end turned away from all men except Silk. He also chose someone who, in her rage, in her bullying, in her casual use of others (think of how she flashed Horn, delighting in her ability to sexually excite men while also refusing them/shming them with their lack of worthiness) replicated his own mother, the relationship he was most familiar with in life.
Hy at the end of the book accuses her husband of deliberately taking her to some awful, dark place ON PURPOSE, in full knowledge she would hate the experience. This gripe, that her boyfriend of husband for some strange reason, was drawn to lure the partner he ostensibly loved to some place of DEATH, occurs throughout Wolfe. The husband declares he loves his wife/girlfriend, the wife responds by saying, in effect, maybe you should become better acquainted with some of drives that move you, because they smell more or hate and murder than love.
Disiri seeks out a boy and sexually uses him. His effort of "love" is really more of reversal and showing to himself that he isn't one to be used by woman, but someone who could control her. There are others of this kind in Wolfe too. One appreciates the impulse -- when it occurs in McEwan's the Music Teacher, one cheers -- but in an exaggerated form, it's the impulse of the male rapist.
So I agree with you. Wolfe's works don't seem to be about love but showing it up as closer to hate. Many of the stories seem to involve past wives complaining about their former husbands, the main protagonists, shaming them, beating them, attempting to murder them, with the stories serving to shame the women for daring to make the men connect with their real intentions rather than allow the guy to remain content that the shaming was normal husband-wife stuff, that the beatings were no more than what wives should silently accept, that the attempted murder was normal for all isolated couples kill -- a single man is being blamed for what is a universally shared impulse.
Severian is unusual in that he actually is drawn to a different kind of woman. He goes more for Dorcas than he does Jolenta, and Dr. Talos finds this commendable. In New Sun, Jonas, a side character, represents more what main characters do -- he meets a woman who thinks he's far too poor and far too old to dare even talk to her, and decides that THIS is the woman for him. They must meet woman who objectively are NOT better than they are but who treat them as if they are throw-aways, because the attraction is not actually love but repetition of early-child experience where their mothers treated them as not especially interesting creatures, even when objectively, to perhaps many others, the child is a phenom. Thus in WizardKnight SPOILER, while Able is well on his way to being a realm-saviour, he persists in thinking he has more to do to ever be equal to an aelf queen, who confesses to him she will take many lovers and remain interested in him only just barely. Able is already great, Disiri is way-past established as pure menace, and he must still do more to prove himself to her.
In Home Fires SPOILER, the main protagonist Skip desires to sleep with a woman twenty years younger, whom he knows will think him middle-aged, fat, balding -- someone hopelessly sexually inadequate and whom she couldn't possibly enjoy -- because just the sheer fact of sleeping with a younger woman would mean so much for his self-consolidation (think of Monty Python's Life of Brian where the prisoner is jealous of the new prisoner, Brian, because the guard favoured him by spitting on him -- he himself had long been deemed worth no notice at all). Of course he expects the woman will show no loyalty to him, of course he expects she will cheat on him... but it doesn't matter: he acquired some sexual satisfaction from a woman he might think beyond him, as well as bragging rights. (The pathetic man who is in a marriage with a beautiful young goddess only because she requires some kind of a married partner, surfaces elsewhere in Wolfe, and in both cases I can think of -- the man who was officially married to SIlk's mother; the main Able sees while in Aelfrice -- the cuckolded man knows they're a cuckold, but maintains self-esteem because he remains married to a woman society would determine as normally well-beyond-him, a prize catch.) But of course this doesn't mean he exempts himself from punishing the woman as well, and in fact it is her registering his strange desire not only to sexually own her but to bring death to her -- murder her -- that causes her ultimately to leave him for good.