Love is only as good as the lover

"Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly. stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye." pg. 206

When I think of love, I think of warm fuzzies and sunshine. I am pretty sure most of us do and yet, as Claudia sums up the meaning of her story, she is describing a very different kind of love. Claudia sees love not as a fairy tale, but as a potentially fatal force. Claudia suggests that "love is never any better than the lover". In this way she attempts to explain how because the people in the novel are destructive, their love, however well-intentioned it may be, is also a destructive force. Previous to this passage Claudia mentions that Cholly, did perhaps love Pecola, but because he is a damaged person, his love was also damaged. Claudia also asserts that "the lover alone possesses his gift of love" suggesting that love is not always the give and take that society would like us to believe. Within this context and the context of the novel love is a take relationship only. Throughout the novel several of the characters encounter love that is lacking for whatever reason. How does this new definition of love explain the way characters in the novel encounter love? What happens when love becomes a more reciprocal relationship? Does this counteract the love is only as good as the lover idea or amplify the effects of a damaged lover?