Have you ever grown tired of someone you love? You are not alone. In today’s day and age, many relationships come to abrupt and disappointing ends. As a matter of fact, about forty to fifty percent of American marriages end in bitter divorces (“Marriage and Relationships”). This was not always the case. If we look back in time we can see how relationships used to be far more durable. When we compare the themes of pre-postmodern writings like William Shakespeare’s “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” with a postmodern one like Joseph Brodsky’s “Love Song,” we can see how society’s view of love used to be eternal and how it evolved into something temporary over time. Up until the postmodern era, our views on relationships were far more conservative and traditional than they are today. If we go back to the 1600s, we can take a look at a Shakespearean sonnet called “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds.” Shakespeare uses this beautiful sonnet to illustrate the theme that love is universal. He personifies love to a person who withstands death when he writes: “Love alters not …show more content…
It is no longer an everlasting bond between two people, but it is something temporary which we can easily grow weary of. Let us challenge this dangerous postmodern idea. What if we wake up every morning and think about the people we love? We should say thanks to God for putting them in our lives, and we should tell them why we are thankful for them. They ought to hear it and be encouraged. They ought to know that they are loved. We need to keep trying to discover new attributes about the people we love, because true love takes continuous effort. This is how to keep the fire in any kind of relationship going strong. Let us have the eternal type of love we saw in the pre-postmodern period (though not to the point of necrophilia) rather than the temporal one of a postmodern
A History of Marriage by Stephanie Coontz speaks of the recent idealization of marriage based solely on love. Coontz doesn’t defame love, but touches on the many profound aspects that have created and bonded marriages through time. While love is still a large aspect Coontz wants us to see that a marriage needs more solid and less fickle aspects than just love. The first chapter begins with an exploration of love and marriage in many ancient and current cultures.
Many hearts are drawn to history's greatest love stories, such as Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie and Clyde, and Helen and Paris to name a few. One could argue that humanity’s way of finding happiness is to seek love. Pure, unadulterated love is one of the hardest feelings to acquire, but when one does, they’d do anything to keep it. Through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and his characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, readers discover that this innate desire to be accepted and loved is both our most fatal flaw and our greatest virtue.
Time and again, history has created a star-crossed couple that overcomes all obstacles through the strength of love. Whether it is from Pyramus and Thisbe, Romeo and Juliet, or Jack and Rose, the only possibility to separate the couple is the death of one or both individuals. Love is defined in these relationships as fighting against all odds, class, society, and even family, in order to be with their loved one. While these stories may be fictional, history has presented a real case of star-crossed “lovers”, Peter Abelard and Heloise. This couple went to little length to fight society in trying to establish a relationship with one another. Although considered a love story to some, a relationship founded on lust, inability to fight for marriage, and union to the church, shatters the illusion of romance and shows the relationship for what it truly is, a lackluster liaison.
Human beings are not isolated individuals. We do not wander through a landscape of trees and dunes alone, reveling in our own thoughts. Rather, we need relationships with other human beings to give us a sense of support and guidance. We are social beings, who need talk and company almost as much as we need food and sleep. We need others so much, that we have developed a custom that will insure company: marriage. Marriage assures each of us of company and association, even if it is not always positive and helpful. Unfortunately, the great majority of marriages are not paragons of support. Instead, they hold danger and barbs for both members. Only the best marriages improve both partners. So when we look at all three of Janie’s marriages, only her marriage to Teacake shows the support, guidance, and love.
Love is a concept that has puzzled humanity for centuries. This attachment of one human being to another, not seen as intensely in other organisms, is something people just cannot wrap their heads around easily. So, in an effort to understand, people write their thoughts down. Stories of love, theories of love, memories of love; they all help us come closer to better knowing this emotional bond. One writer in particular, Sei Shōnagon, explains two types of lovers in her essay "A Lover’s Departure": the good and the bad.
Brockmeier’s short story represents a damaged marriage between a husband and a wife simply due to a different set of values and interests. Brockmeier reveals that there is a limit to love; husbands and wives will only go so far to continually show love for each other. Furthermore, he reveals that love can change as everything in this ever changing world does. More importantly, Brockmeier exposes the harshness and truth behind marriage and the detrimental effects on the people in the family that are involved. In the end, loving people forever seems too good to be true as affairs and divorces continually occur in the lives of numerous couples in society. However, Brockmeier encourages couples to face problems head on and to keep moving forward in a relationship. In the end, marriage is not a necessity needed to live life fully.
In the article, “The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love” author Stephanie Coontz argues that love is not a good enough reason to get married. People shouldn’t marry just because they love one another, Coontz suggests that perhaps marriage should be based on how well a couple gets along and whether or not if the significant other is accepted by the family. One will notice in the article that Coontz makes it very clear that she is against marrying because of love. In the article is a bit of a history lesson of marriage and love within different cultures from all over the world. Coontz then states her thesis in the very end of the article which is that the European and American ways of marriage is the
Much like Lorraine Hansberry, Madeleine L’Engle believes that “the growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.” Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Glass Menagerie, and Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias use the idea that even through struggles their characters show that love always endures. Although loving someone, who is not particularly loveable, is one of the most difficult parts of being human, it is possible by remembering that addictions can be reversed, blood is forever, and a ring is more than just an object.
In her book, Against Love, Laura Kipnis explains her views on love and why she is against it. She begins with an explanation of how maturity plays into love; maturity in love is seen as the willingness to settle down while immaturity is not wanting to commit. Then she gives a tour of love throughout history, stating that romantic love didn't exist until only a few centuries ago. Also, Kipnis believes that advanced intimacy, one of the essential things to keep a relationship healthy, isn’t good and an overall scary experience. Lastly she lists off an endless list of arbitrary things that you can not do in a relationship anymore. Kipnis contends that if it helps a society to have its citizens believe that it’s shameful to start over, or that wanting more from a relationship is illicit, grizzly acts of self mutilation are clearly needed. However, I believe that love is, in essence, unnecessary. One can live their entire life without
The fairytale depiction of love and romance seems to no longer exist in society. With the growing divorce rate and the increase of loveless marriage, it is rare to find an honest depiction of twenty first century love. Using the relationship of Carol and Howard as a hyperbole to modern day romance, Mavis Gallant explores the theme of algorithmic relationships to develop a commentary on the lack of love in modern day relationships. The characterization of Carol and Howard as an engaged couple lacking love and the use of abstract ideas, analogies, and hyperbole, “The Other Paris” tells the dismal future of relationships.
Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 32.1, TRANSLATIONAL APPLIED SOCIOLOGY (2009): 158-83. JSTOR.Web. 11 May 2014. Chalmers, Jennifer H. "Romantic Love: Is It a Realistic Goal for Marriage Therapy?" Romantic Love: Is It a Realistic Goal for Marriage Therapy?
Leo Gursky loved many things, but that is not what The History of Love explores. “To lose you have to have had” (Krauss 120). Leo loved and had Alma, his family, son, book, heart, and himself, but over the course of the book and his life, Leo loses each and every one of those. His love covers up the real truth of the book; how one handles loss defines their mental strength and sense of self. One can work long and hard to build up and maintain love, but in what can seem to be a blink of an eye, all of it can be gone. When an individual is drowning in loss, it is a true test of their mental strength and perseverance; one of which Leo Gursky did not pass.
Love and the way we love others varies across different individuals of various cultural backgrounds. From a psychoanalytic approach, many theorists in this field focus on the development of love and it’s stages as we become of age to establish a loving, healthy relationship with a companion. In the book titled Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research (Friedman & Schustack, 2013), A person must have social connection with others in order to achieve true happiness. This is something so unique to humans; the human connection. To connect with another person on an emotional, intellectual, and even physical level brings on an entire new perspective on life. Love is the most powerful force that we have as human
Back in the Age of Enlightenment people felt marriage depended more on the basis of survival, they would tolerate unhappiness for the sake of living; however, for the romantics love was the necessary foundation for marriage as they held unconventional views about taking vows, not for the purposes of obtaining security from material things like money and land. For the romantics love was passionate and out of control, some even felt that spontaneous desire for someone was enough reason to believe they were in love and took it so far as to have wild passionate love affairs one after the other even if they were married.
Blum, Virginia L. “Love Studies: Or, Liberating Love.” American Literary History, vol. 17, no. 2, 2005, pp. 335–348. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3568037.