Examine the theme of love and marriage in at least two texts you have studied

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Jackie Dunkley

Examine the theme of love and marriage in at least two texts you have studied

Everybody has diverse outlooks on the terms love and marriage.  This is because both terms depend on a number of aspects such as background, personal attributes, religion, and personal experiences etc all of which are unique to each person.

Love is a very controversial thing and there are numerous forms of it. There is perhaps the most obvious love for a partner (sexual love) this is the most common outlook of love. This type of love is one all consuming and sometimes can bring heartache it is a love completely of another person both in mind and body.

Love can also be in the paternal sense a love of a parent to a child or from one member of a family to another, this is a perhaps more trustworthy love then that in the sexual sense as there will always be this family relationship between the two members whereas sexual love may come and go. This is steadfast love and perhaps in some senses the strongest love as most parents would die before having their children hurt but may easily look over their partners dismay.

There can be other figures of love to like patriotism for example-a strong compassion for your country, place of origin. This comes into play little in today’s society and when it does can be somewhat trivialised in forms of individuals patriotism cropping up when their country’s football team is playing for example.

Love is open to interpretation as is marriage. People may marry for many different reasons such as love money comfort or arrangement.

Marriage is not always in today’s society a matter of love or eternity as it should indeed be in a constitution where you swear on the holy bible to love and honour another person for eternity. In modern society it has become more of a thing for comfort, having someone to grow old with. In eastern countries it is still a matter of arrangement by families in order to join two families or gain dowry. Also there are indeed still many people who marry purely for the monetary possession they will gain when their partner passes away. Cold as it may seem marriage isn’t the constitution of eternal love anymore and indeed situations exist where lovers may not marry due to social class or standing. As we can see both love and marriage can be abused in context and have indeed widen in their descriptions since previous years.

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For the purposes of this essay I will be examining three short texts in the hope of examining further theses themes.  ‘The unexpected’ by Kate Choplin, ‘A suitable boy’ and ‘Tony Kytes the arch deceiver’ by Thomas Hardy all show us different aspects of the themes love and marriage at completely diverse periods in history.

In ‘The unexpected’ love and marriage are both widely trivialised as the main characters seemingly don’t know what either truly are as when an obstacle such as illness and altered appearance comes into play the love and in turn the impending marriage are both ended ...

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