Love or Lust? Women in Lysistrata compared to Women in Death and the Maiden

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Love and Lust

Richard Rodgers, a famous American composer once remarked, ‘do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?’ Love and lust are vastly different entities the difference of which is like the difference between the surface of an ocean, in comparison to its deep aquatic life.  Lust is an attraction solely founded on physical appeal, or like an ocean’s surface, one’s outer appearances. In contrast, love is a complex attraction based on the appeal of character, virtuous attributes, or the appeal of personality. Love is earned, developed and maintained; whereas lust can be the outcome of a single glance, and endures until one’s desires are fulfilled. The theme of love is visible in the text Death and the Maiden, while the concept of lust is evident in the comedic play by Aristophanes, Lysistrata.

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         Love and lust are themes frequently represented in plays, novels, short stories and poems. Written by Greek playwright Aristophanes, Lysistrata is a comical play characterized by the theme of lust. In Lysistrata, the female characters implement a sexual embargo against their spouses until an end to the Peloponnesian War is promised. The literary elements, plot details and character dialogues in Lysistrata, exhibit the power of sexual desire, known as lust. The leader of the female band, Lysistrata, understood the wild libido of men, and manipulated man’s weakness to in turn to her own agenda. Aristophanes uses sexual and graphic phrases such ...

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