Unrequited (pronounced uhn-ri-kwahy-tid)
(1) Of love, not returned or reciprocated.
(2) Not avenged or retaliated.
(3) Not repaid or satisfied.
1535–1545: The construct was un- + the past participle of requit (ie +-ed). The un- prefix was from the Middle English un-, from the Old English un-, from the Proto-West Germanic un-, from the Proto-Germanic un-, from the primitive Indo-European n̥-. It was cognate with the Scots un- & on-, the North Frisian ün-, the Saterland Frisian uun-, the West Frisian ûn- & on-, the Dutch on-, the Low German un- & on-, the German un-, the Danish u-, the Swedish o-, the Norwegian u- and the Icelandic ó-. It was (distantly) related to the Latin in- and the Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-), source of the English a-, the Modern Greek α- (a-) and the Sanskrit अ- (a-). The verb requite dates from circa 1400 in the sense of "repay" (for good or ill), the construct being re- (back) + the Middle English quite (clear, pay up), an early variant of the verb quit preserved in this word. The –ed suffix was from the Middle English –ede & -eden, from the Old English –ode & -odon (weak past ending), from the Proto-Germanic -ōd- & -ōdēdun. It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -ede (-ed) (first person singular past indicative ending), the Swedish -ade (-ed) and the Icelandic -aði. The suffix was used to form past tenses of (regular) verbs. In linguistics, it remains used for the base form of any past form. Unrequited is an adjective. In English, from the 1540s, the earliest reference of the Middle English requiten (to repay), from Old French requiter, is to love affairs.
When you give someone your whole heart and he doesn't want it, you cannot take it back. It's gone forever. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963).
Path's only novel, The Bell Jar was first published in the UK under the pen-name "Victoria Lucas" and is usually described as "semi-autobiographical", names of people & places changed to protect the innocent and the guilty, a literary genre known as a Roman à clef (from the French and literally "novel with a key"), the notion of the "key" being that certain knowledge allows a reader to "unlock" the truth, a instance of "reading between the lines" and the technique has widely been used for reasons both personal and legal. Within a month of publication, Plath would take her own life and it wasn't until 1967 The Bell Jar was re-released under her name. Dr Heather Clark's (b 1974) recent biography of Plath (Red Comet (2021)) was outstanding.
You loved me-then what right had you to leave me? What right-answer me-for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847).
Her only novel, Wuthering Heights was first published under the ambiguous pen name "Ellis Bell", a hint at the attitudes of many in the literary establishment (and not a few publishers) towards women writers. Tellingly, critics at the time were often not kind and while the power of the text was noted, for most it seems to have been too raw to be thought "respectable" fiction and it's latter day reputation as one of the classics of English literature evolved only in the twentieth century under the influence of modernist writing and proto-feminism. Wuthering Heights is one of those books best read when young because if too long delayed, the historic moment may have passed. That said, there have probably been some young ladies who read it while at their most impressionable and never quite recovered.
If asked to distil from Shakespeare’s works the two most frequent themes, one might suggest "low skulduggery" and "unrequited love" though that’s something which might be said of many literary traditions. In unrequited love Shakespeare saw comedic potential as well as tragedy because it’s as present in Much Ado About Nothing (1598) & All’s Well that Ends Well (1602) as it is in Romeo & Juliet (1594) where youthful agonies are laid bare. Sometimes there’s overlap between the tragic and the comic: Malvolio’s desire for the affections Olivia in Twelfth Night (1602) are played for laughs although there’s something cruel about the way things end. In Cymbeline (1609), it’s a tangle with a flavour of a modern TV talk show, Cloten besotted with Imogen, his mother’s husband’s daughter (ie his step-sister). Queen Katharine (Catherine of Aragon) in Henry VIII (1613) was the first of the king’s many wives and was both abandoned and bewildered why her love was unrequited but Henry had his own agenda and was in some was perhaps closer to Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597) where it’s really an unrequited lust. Low skulduggery and unrequited love are both explored in Othello (1603), Roderigo’s longing for Desdemona rendering him vulnerable to manipulation by the evil Iago who harbours his own desires. In Measure for Measure (1603) there’s a reward for Mariana enduring “five years” of unrequited love for “thou cruel Angelo” who cancelled their engagement because he dowery wasn’t enough: “Her promised proportions / Came short of composition”. Angelo however is outwitted and Mariana gets her man. In that case, for her at least, all was well that ends well. So in Shakespeare there is plenty of unrequited love but he seems to have found the Norse and other Germanic myths emotionally over-wrought and was more pragmatic:
Why then, O brawling love! O
loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing
first create!
O heavy lightness, serious
vanity,
Misshapen chaos of
well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright
smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is
not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel
no love in this.
William Shakespeare, Romeo
and Juliet (1594)
The Roman Poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC–17 AD) in the 814 line Remedia Amoris ("Love's Remedy", circa 2 AD) offered a cure for pining youth suffering the pangs of unrequited love. His solutions included travel, teetotalism, gardening and, without any apparent sense of irony, the avoidance of love poets.
Lindsay Lohan, Something That I Never Had from Speak (2004).
Do
you see me?Do
you feel me like I feel you?Call
your numberI
cannot get throughYou
don't hear meAnd
I don't understandWhen
I reach outWell,
I don't find your hand Were
they wasted words?And
did they mean a thingAnd
all that precious timeBut
I still feel so in-between Someday,
I just keep pretendingThat
you'll stayDreaming
of a different endingI
wanna hold onBut
it hurts so badAnd
I can't keep something that I never had Well,
I keep tellin' myselfThings
can turn around with timeAnd
if I wait it outYou
could always change your mindLike
a fairytaleWhere
it works out in the endCan
I close my eyes?Have
you lying here again
Lindsay Lohan's Something That I Never Had was a tale of the agony of unrequited love. She should have read from Part XIII of Ovid's Remedia Amoris:
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