ABSTRACT

This chapter offers a preliminary formalism for describing character relationships within story tradition, and more particularly character relationships within the story pattern in which one woman is positioned between two potential partners. It deals with characters only, though a complete formalism would also include an integrated schema for events. Rather than simulating the reality of romantic relationships, or the psychological or sociological or historical interpretation of romantic relationships, the Woman two Partners (W2P) formalism is a purposeful interpretative exaggeration of traditional story patterns. W2P pattern divides male characters into Boyfriends of ObliGation (BOGs) and Boyfriends of Desire (BODs). Finally, the chapter focuses on a heterosexual pattern that can also accommodate same-sex and bisexual love stories as long as they fit the triangle structure of a desirable and obligated person romantically positioned between desire and obligation.