An Intertextual Dating App
Imagine if we could set up characters from different novels on dates....
Back in college, when I still imagined I might try my hand at fiction, I had this idea to develop a new genre in which characters from different classic novels would go out on terrible dates — a sort of polymorphically perverse postmodern fanfic. Think Holden Caulfield (Catcher in the Rye) and Hermione Granger (Harry Potter); or Captain Ahab (Moby Dick) and Amy Dunne (Gone Girl); or Patrick Bateman (American Psycho) and (the eponymous) Jane Eyre.
Well, I’m no fiction writer, so I decided to plug a couple of these ideas into ChatGPT. The prompt was to write the Hinge profile for each person, and then to describe the date from the POV of the woman. Predictably (ahem), these aren’t artful, but they’re nonetheless amusing as a gag:
Date: Humbert Humbert (Lolita) & (the eponymous) Pollyanna
Humbert, 37
Occupation: Professor of French Literature
Bio: A man of letters, refined tastes, and unfortunate sensitivities. I am looking for a companion who possesses a certain... youthful quality — an uncorrupted grace that the world has not yet calloused. I value the lyrical, the European, and the silent understanding of one’s own fleeting bloom.
I’m the type of person who: Will write you a sonnet in the morning and offer a world-weary sigh by dinner.
The hallmark of a good relationship is: A shared sanctuary away from the prying, philistine eyes of a judgmental society.
Pollyanna, 18
Occupation: Missionary of Joy
Bio: There is something to be glad about in everything! I love meeting new people because everyone has a secret sunshine just waiting to come out. I’m looking for someone who needs a little help finding their smile. Let’s play the Glad Game together!
I’m the type of person who: Finds the silver lining in a thunderstorm and the beauty in a broken window.
My simple pleasure: Turning a frown upside down!
The Date
Location: A small tea room that tried its very best, even though the wallpaper was peeling and the sugar bowl had a chip shaped like Ohio.
I decided at once that the tea room was doing a wonderful job. After all, if a place has lasted this long with only three mismatched chairs and a clock that refused to agree with itself, that showed real character. I told myself I would be especially glad about that.
Mr. Humbert was already seated when I arrived. He rose so abruptly that his teacup rattled, which I thought was very kind of it — to let me know how excited he was. His suit looked heavy and serious, the sort of suit that had listened to a great many sad thoughts, and his expression reminded me of someone who had misplaced something important and decided never to forgive the world for it.
“I hope you didn’t wait long,” I said cheerfully, because it’s always nicer to start with hope.
“I have been waiting all my life,” he replied, pressing his fingers together as if they were very disappointed in one another.
I was so glad he was honest.
The sunlight came through the window in a straightforward, unembarrassed way, landing right on our table. I noticed Mr. Humbert flinch at it, which seemed a shame, because it made the dust look positively festive — like tiny, invisible people having a party just for us.
“This light is very… exposed,” he said finally. “There is no refuge in it.”
“That’s what I like best!” I answered. “It means nothing is hiding. Don’t you think it’s comforting when everything is right where it belongs?”
He stared at me as though I had just suggested rearranging the laws of gravity.
When the tea arrived — lukewarm, but trying — Mr. Humbert sighed deeply, as if the cup had personally disappointed him.
“Oh, I’m glad it isn’t too hot,” I said quickly. “That way we can drink it right away. Waiting always makes me nervous — it feels like wasted happiness.”
He made a sound then, not unlike a violin being asked an impossible question.
“You do not seem to understand,” he said slowly. “Life is meant to ache. Beauty must be fragile, or it is meaningless.”
I thought about that very carefully.
“Well,” I said, smiling, “I think things can be beautiful and sturdy. Like bridges! Or library books. Or people who keep being kind even when they’ve had every reason not to be.”
At this, he looked quite stricken. I wondered if no one had ever told him that before, which made me a little sad — but only for a moment, because sadness is much easier when you know it can’t last forever.
“You are… alarmingly content,” he said.
“Thank you!” I replied. “I’ve worked very hard at it.”
He stood up suddenly, knocking his chair back. I was glad it didn’t fall — it would have been embarrassed.
“I must go,” he said hoarsely. “I am in search of a tragedy, and you—” He gestured helplessly at me. “You are a solution.”
That sounded like a compliment, so I waved as he hurried away, coat flapping like it had its own worries.
I wasn’t upset that he forgot the scones. I was just glad he left in such a hurry — because when people rush home, it usually means they’re about to learn something important. And I do so hope he does.
Date: Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) & Emma Bovary (Madame Bovary)
Heathcliff, 38
Occupation: Landowner
Bio: I am not a “nice guy.” I don’t want your hobbies, your small talk, or your pity. I am looking for a soul that is the same as mine — wild, treacherous, and eternal. If you aren’t prepared to haunt me or be destroyed by me, don’t bother.
I’m the type of person who: Will wait twenty years to ruin your family for a slight.
The hallmark of a good relationship is: Two souls becoming one singular, agonizing force of nature.
Emma Bovary, 27
Occupation: Curator of Refined Desires
Bio: Seeking a love that feels like a symphony in a moonlit garden. I have a taste for the finer things — velvet, Italian opera, and the kind of “grande passion” that makes one faint. I am trapped in a world of mediocre men; I need a hero who can whisk me away to a life of perpetual drama and silk.
I’m the type of person who: Is in love with the idea of love.
My simple pleasure: Receiving expensive bouquets and anonymous love letters.
The Date
Location: An inn at the edge of the moors, chosen by him with the same indifference one reserves for weather.
Emma arrived already fatigued, not so much by the journey as by the offense it had committed against her expectations. The carriage had splashed her hem with a viscous brown that refused to be picturesque. The wind tugged at her veil without gallantry. Everything conspired to remind her that this was England, and worse, reality.
The inn was low-ceilinged and damp. A fire burned without enthusiasm. The air smelled of ale, wool, and resignation.
Heathcliff sat apart, his body angled inward, as if guarding some interior ruin. He did not rise. He did not smile. He did not perform even the minimal courtesies that Emma associated — quite reasonably, she thought — with masculine mystery. He merely looked at her, briefly, in the same way one looks at an object whose utility is uncertain.
“So,” he said. Nothing more.
Emma felt, at once, the collapse of an entire imaginary architecture. She had furnished this meeting lavishly: moonlight, suffering ennobled by restraint, a man silent because words were inadequate to his feeling. Instead there was only this monosyllable, coarse and final.
She seated herself carefully, arranging her skirts as though the proper alignment of silk might yet redeem the scene.
“I had envisioned something rather different,” she said, allowing a trace of weariness into her voice. “A café. Conversation. One must admit, the setting matters.”
“The setting is what it is,” Heathcliff replied. He returned to his drink.
This wounded her more than she expected. Indifference, she reflected, was far crueler than brutality. Brutality could be shaped, dramatized, forgiven. Indifference simply excluded.
She spoke then of music, of passion, of the vastness of feeling that life owed her but had so far failed to deliver. As she spoke, she listened to herself with a divided attention—half convinced, half evaluating the effect. The words sounded thinner than usual in this room, like silk dragged across stone.
Heathcliff watched her with an expression she could not quite name: not contempt, not interest, but a weary exactitude, as though he were measuring the distance between what she said and what she was.
“You want excess without consequence,” he said at last. “You want longing without loss. That isn’t love. It’s decoration.”
Emma felt heat rise to her face. She had expected darkness, yes — but a darkness that adored her, that validated her hunger by reflecting it. This was something else entirely: a man uninterested in serving as the mirror of her desires.
“I suffer,” she said quickly, hoping suffering might restore her authority.
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “You’re bored.”
The word struck her with humiliating precision. Boredom — how she despised it, and how relentlessly it followed her, from convent to marriage, from fantasy to fantasy, faithful as a hound.
She stood. The room seemed suddenly smaller, meaner, unworthy of her anguish.
As she left, she told herself — carefully, convincingly — that he was crude, that refinement mattered, that true passion must come wrapped in elegance. Yet beneath this reasoning there stirred a colder realization, one she did not permit to finish forming:
that for once she had not been misunderstood,
only seen,
and found insufficient.
The wind outside was sharp. She pulled her cloak tighter, already rehearsing a better version of this evening — one in which she had been wronged more beautifully.