What women want

I have been watching Wives and Daughters, an English period drama that transported me into a different world these last four nights. It's a total chic-flick with a story structure similar to Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and the like, where an unspoken or forbidden love that has endured long suffering drives the plot. The tension in these movies derives from the emotional restraint the lead characters display, essentially, when you think about it, because they value chastity.  I found it very curious that women are drawn to this type of romance like bee to honey--even in our age when chastity is considered ridiculous.  Yet if the heroines and heroes in these films lived like most people do today there would be no tension in the films, no story...nothing.

Take the baffling success of the movie Twilight for example. (Baffling because it was such a bad movie that I couldn't stomach watching the whole thing!) The hero, a good looking vampire, had to refrain from loving the heroine because love consummated in this case would kill his beloved. So he restrained himself due to his love for her. Wow--get any good looking actor to play a role like this and he will become an instant star.  

My point is, there is something about a man who can restrain himself physically that really melts a woman's heart--and Hollywood knows it. Perhaps the Christian view on this matter isn't as wrongheaded as society would have us think...