Feminist Critical Analysis: Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love"

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Recommended: Religion and gender inequalities

I will be focusing on the critiquing strategy of the feminism Eat Pray Love “One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia” (Elizabeth Gilbert 2006). In this essay we will closely examine love, lust, marriage and divorce. Many marriages are committed within love but in all honestly, most are made up of lust. Which leads us to asking ourselves, is there any certainty of the balance of love? Are we ever certain when it comes to seeking a life of solitude or companionship?

As children we grow to learn, you must love yourself before loving someone else. In order to love yourself, you must understand the definition of self- love. “Self- love: Regard for one’s own well- being and happiness.” Can you sincerely claim it? As we grow older and supposedly wiser, as young woman finding comfort in a man there often times lay uncertainties. Within marriage there are promised commitment to not only someone else, but to yourself. Interesting fact about life, the tables always turn. Suddenly when you agree to engage in marriage, it becomes if you love someone else you must be able to place him or her before yourself. Where is the balance? Once married, we must reflect on our hopes and dreams, are we expected to be accommodating life long goals?

Elizabeth Gilbert, a successful woman with a soul filled of hopes and dreams. Gilbert, a married woman to whom does not reveal her husbands’ identity but their marriage within the Eat, Pray Love. She is a successful New York writer. She believed once she hit thirty she would become a mother and fit in with every other married woman but as she discovers at age 31, she is uncertain of motherhood. For the first time Gilbert falls on her hands and knee and introduces he...

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... in the process. She saw past what she didn’t know when married, yet without her initial marriage that drove her to great misery, she would have never achieved becoming who she was destine to be. Not all feminists believe all men should be shunned and in fact it is believed that most feminist do become married. It is said “Sisterhood is powerful, but not that powerful.” Marriage does not determine how sovereign a woman is; it is a chosen unity that a couple commits of pure love. It is ultimately our decision of a life that includes solitude or companionship.

Works Cited

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert 2006

Elizabeth Gilbert's Official Website http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/eatpraylove

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006

Time Magazine In Partnership with CNN - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/eatpraylove

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