Explore the presentation of unrequited love in the Sonnets and Far From the Madding Crowd. In the course of your writing show how your ideas have been illuminated by your response to the Way of the World and other readings of both core texts.

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Explore the presentation of unrequited love in the Sonnets and Far From the Madding Crowd. In the course of your writing show how your ideas have been illuminated by your response to the Way of the World and other readings of both core texts.

Unrequited love is love that is not openly reciprocated, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep affections. The authors of the three given texts have used male superiority as an ironic contrivance to display the inner weakness of their sex when it comes to love. Unrequited love can be widely distinguished in “Far from the Madding Crowd,” between the characters of Oak and Bathsheba, Boltwood and Bathsheba and Troy and Bathsheba. “Shakespeare’s sonnets” reveal the feelings of this particular emotion in a variety of sonnets and can also be acknowledged in “A Lover’s Complaint.” It goes to be further explained in “The Way of the World,” through the characters of Mrs Fainall and Mirabell as well as Fainall and Mrs Marwood.

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Unrequited love is presented through conversations, highlighting the weakness of the male characters. In Hardy’s novel, during an interaction between Bathsheba and Oak regarding a proposal of marriage, the reader is presented with a male who is shown as being the weaker character. At some stage in this exchange, Oak says, “I shall do one thing in this life...and keep wanting you till I die,” which Hardy describes as a “genuine pathos,” portraying Oak’s ingrained love for Bathsheba. Hardy evokes sympathy towards Oak, by using emotive descriptions such as “a deep honest sigh,” as a contrast to Bathsheba’s apparent “yawn ...

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