Here's two love scenes excerpted from one of my favorite anthologies, "101 Best Scenes Ever Written."
That's Flaubert above, and the first scene is from his "Madame Bovary." I can't say that I like the story...Madame Bovary has to be one of the least appealing characters in all of fiction...but the famous sex scene is first rate. Nothing explicit, yet it succeeds in being really steamy. See what you think.
In this scene the clerk has convinced Madame Bovary to join him in a horse-driven cab with the blinds down. Bovary is married but she's flirted with the clerk for a long time, not fully realizing where it would lead. Now the moment of truth has arrived and she goes along with it because she doesn't know what else to do. The cab driver is instructed to drive anywhere he chooses.
The second scene is from James M. Cain's "The Postman Always Rings Twice," in my opinion one of the best novels written in America. That's a scene from the movie above.
What I have here (below) is the scene where Cora hints to Frank that she wants him to kill her husband, who everybody calls the Greek. Frank likes the Greek, who generously gave him a job and a place to stay. He can't imagine doing anything so drastic, but Cora convinces him that they're both good people, and whatever good people do can't be wrong. It's an horrific but interesting argument, and a terrific love scene. When they kiss at the end, you get the feeling that a breach has been made in the shield that protects us from evil, and enormous cosmic forces are being unleashed.
That's James M. Cain above. His best stories seem to say, "There is such a thing as evil, even in the New World, and we have a special vulnerability to it, because we don't seem to acknowledge its existence."
