Love and Spice

WARNING:

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR A 58 YEAR OLD BOOK THAT HAS BEEN ADAPTED INTO TWO MOVIES AND ONE TV SERIES.

Everything I needed to know about love I learned from Dune. Okay, I’m not serious about that. But I do find the depiction of love and romantic relationships in Dune to be quite fascinating, as it is not just different from most sci-fi, but most fiction in general.

Dune, by Frank Herbert, is many things at once. It is considered one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time. However, much is misunderstood or glossed over in this seminal work by Herbert. Most often fans, critics, and makers of film and television focus on the obvious aspects of the book. Of course things like the spice, the Fremen, atomics, and clashes between the Atreides and Harkonnen are important aspects of the novel. However, if one looks under the surface, there are deeper aspects to look at.

Often when people talk about the deeper aspects of Dune, they will turn to the political intrigue. Or the often touted, “it’s about oil” troupe. I personally disagree with this assertion, but will save that for a different article. Some will pull at the strings of the ecological aspects. Or the concepts of colonialism portrayed in the book. However, one of the things I found most interesting in Dune was the portrayal of love and romantic relationships.

In Dune there are two primary romantic relationships depicted. The first is that between the Duke Leto Atreides and Lady Jessica. The relationship between these two is interesting, as the Duke and Jessica are not married, but rather she is his concubine. This is odd, as the Duke does not have a wife, as would be the normal custom when a man has a concubine. But rather the Duke treats her as his wife in all ways, but having been able to legally marry her. This is due to the loving relationship that the two have developed over their years together.

The relationship that blossoms between Lady Jessica and the Duke eventually leads her to ignore her primary duty as member of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. This primary duty was to bear a daughter to the Duke, thus fulfilling the sisterhood’s desire to continue on their experiment to create the most powerful being in the universe; the Kwisatz Haderach. In turn, Jessica chooses to have a son for the Duke out of love.

Thus, in this depiction of love in Dune, Herbert is demonstrating the kind of love one can have for another that goes against what is expected of us from others. Sometimes, life is more fulfilling when we choose the relationship we want to have with someone, rather than simply falling into the trap of societal norms. And it is this trait that carries on into Paul Atreides’s relationships.

In Dune, Paul meets his love long before he meets his future wife. The relationship between Paul and Chani is quite different from that of the Lady Jessica and the Duke. As the Duke and Jessica’s relationship was an arrangement of political intrigue that blossomed into love, Paul and Chani’s relationship is one that blossoms in the heat of the desert. I suppose one could say their relationship was arranged, if you want to believe in Paul’s visions of Chani before they met. Thus, the universe or fate arranged their relationship.

Much like his mother, Paul has to balance love with duty. But in Paul’s case, it’s more of solidifying his position as the new Padishah Emperor towards the end of the novel. This is overshadowed by what has now been several years of Chani and Paul having been together. Thus, when Paul is obligated to marry his legal wife, Princess Irulan, it is out of a political need, not a place of love. This is demonstrated by Paul only having children with Chani. And it is these children that become Paul’s heirs.

Throughout the book, it is clear that Paul and Chani are truly in love with each other. They have the deep kind of love that only comes from opening one’s self up to the possibilities someone represents and taking a chance on them to discover the kind of person we can become. Irulan is a political instrument. This is no judgment of her. It is an unfortunate reality of her existence that was chosen long before the events of Dune. Whereas the relationship between Chani and Paul is one of choice and love.

I do find it very interesting that Herbert not only chose to depict love and relationships in these contradictory ways, as it goes against the way that love and relationships are often portrayed in fiction. But not only that, it is more interesting that Herbert deliberately chose to put Paul in an interracial relationship.

I feel like this aspect of Dune is often overlooked. Granted, it is harder to pick up the cultural impact of this from a book, rather than when Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura kissed on screen. However, this is one of the first, if not the first, positive depictions of an interracial relationship in fiction I’m aware of.

To many fans of science fiction this wouldn’t be that surprising, as the genre as a whole often questions societal norms of the day. But the depiction is still very significant. In the end, we can see this as but one of the many examples in Dune of questioning the systems of power in our society, and how we interact with them.

I realize this all might be more than what most people have pulled from this book. But it’s something I’ve thought about often. It’s one of the aspects of Dune that I feel is most often overlooked when people talk about the impact this book has made on them or the world. And it is an aspect that thus far has been lost in the two previous attempts to bring the book to film. I can’t wait to see how Denis Villeneuve takes on this aspect of the novel in the second half of his adaptation.

Thank you for reading my work. If you enjoyed this story, there’s more below. Please hit the like and subscribe button, you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @AtomicHistorian, and if you want to help me create more content, please consider leaving a tip or become a pledged subscriber.

More from this author: