The Forty Rules of Love

Ella is one of the protagonists of the novel and one of the characters through whom the story is told. The narrative begins a few months shy of Ella’s fortieth birthday, with Ella feeling unenthused by life and love. While she has a healthy family and hard-working husband, she is incredibly pragmatic, perhaps even edging on cynical. Ella does not think that love is an important aspect of life and instead believes that it’s something that exists primarily at the beginning of relationships and then erodes. It’s clear that Ella feels this way based on her relationship with her husband, as they are nothing more than two people who share the same bed. Ella either feels largely unconnected to the people around her or is way too involved with people. Ella’s eldest daughter Jeanette, for example, sees the brunt of Ella’s more controlling qualities.

Ella’s life generally lacks passion, and throughout the narrative, Ella grapples with what it means to have interests and passions as a former stay-at-home mother whose connection to the outside world is primarily through her husband and her children. As a mother of three, Ella’s life is very domestic; she spends a good deal of her time preparing meals for her family or helping her younger children, the twins Orly and Avi, with their homework.