Essays on Romantic Love

Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs provides an appealing story with various themes and messages. Originally aired in 1937, the film now appears dated; as could be expected, it is rooted in its period. It is culturally important as the globe’s first full-length cartoon, but watching it against the backdrop of today’s society exposes the film’s stereotypes and attitudes towards romantic love. A feminist critique reveals the abusive and superficial nature of romance in the film, whereas an anti-capitalist analysis of the story demonstrates the strong links between money and power. Snow White ...

Love is a complex subject as its definition and understanding varies among people. Collins and Manfred (27) assert that true love is one that triumphs lastingly through painful moments and hurdles present in everyday life. It is undeniable that love is quite essential in different cultures, considering how it is discussed in songs, films and books by people from various societies. Love is a vibrant theme especially among the youth as they transit from childhood to adulthood. Philosophically, love cuts across a variety of disciplines such as metaphysics, human nature, ethics, religion and epistemology. In this regard, love may ...

Since the beginning of time, men and women have fallen in love with each other, made sacrifices, waged war for love, and died for love. People from different cultures have different ways of expressing and experiencing love. Also, men and women have different ways of experiencing love. Is there a Western tradition of thinking about romantic love? What are its characteristics? Is it specific to the West? Do you agree with it? People from different parts of the world think about love differently. People from the West think about romantic love as a matter from the heart. An individual ...

Marriage is a tradition that is practiced and honored all over the world. It signifies the birth of a relationship that grants couples the privilege to build families and an enduring kinship ties. Studies show that people who are happily married have more desirable benefits and experiences than those who are unmarried, cohabiting, widowed, or separated (Shariff 557). Specifically, married individuals have better parenting styles, stronger support systems, greater economic security, greater financial resources, healthier psychological status, more desirable emotional wellbeing, greater physical health, and longer life. Marriage practices in Western countries are different from those of other societies. ...

Today, the internet is a prime avenue among the youths as well as adults for social interactions. Through internet tools and applications such as chat rooms, email, newsgroups, instant messaging as well as other means, individuals share all sorts of information such as their interests with others, aspects pertaining to their daily lives and keep in touch with their friends and family members. In essence, today, the primary use of mobile phones and personal computers is social interaction. In the process, online social interaction has also brought about people seeking to form relationships with others whom they have met ...

Philosophy Questions

Robert Solomon postulated that love is a matter of choice, opposing the normal view that love is a natural feeling that is elicited by our spontaneous attraction to each other. He argues that love is a conscious decision that brings together two people searching for self-identity. In explaining the idea of self-identity, Robert raises the issue of inseparability, whereby, by falling in love, we are looking for that person who makes us comfortable by getting inculcated in our lives to form mosaic kind of a figure, made by an amalgamation of two figures. The fact that we choose our ...

Although love is usually categorized as an emotion, a variety of biological, psychological, and sociological factors determine with whom a person falls in love and how long that feeling lasts. For example, physical attraction depends on factors such as physiological arousal, the effects of pheromones, facial features, and similarity, but biological factors do not contribute to the development of long-lasting relationships because the initial attraction fades (Braxton-Davis & Boudreaux, 2010, p. 7). In other words, it is possible to fall in love with a person because of biological factors, but psychological and sociological factors determine if the feeling persists and ...

The legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States has caused a conflict between legality and moral-religious normalcy. For one, there are those who believe that that amending the nation’s laws on marriage does not in any way change what God has laid down from the very beginning; that the sacrament of marriage is only between a man and a woman. In this respect, the Bible is replete with teachings and warnings that clearly illustrate God’s attitude about marriage, from the Book of Genesis of the New Testament. As such, this continuity on the norms of marriage ...

There are probably very few people who have not heard the words from their wife or husband, “How much do you love me?” There are uncounted numbers of poems and song lyrics dedicated to the topic of the breadth and depth of undying passion. A constant stream of books such as “Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus” and “Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships” tout philosophies for providing understanding and excitement for couples. Romantic love may lead to the life-long commitment of a monogamous relationship, but it is generally known that the first ...

Love- A feeling, a word and a sensation that has made people laugh, cry , kill, poets write realms of poetry, scientists try and understand what it is all about and many others wish for it. There are different kinds of love- the love a mother has for her child, the love a father shows his children, love for friends, pets and then there is romantic love. Of the above, perhaps it is romantic love that has been the most written about and vilified. Love is also a state of being that makes a person experience different emotions at the ...

Love may refer to the emotion that is associated with strong affection and attachment. It is the virtue that represents the human compassion, kindness and affection towards other human beings, animals or one’s self. In psychology, love is depicted as a social and a cognitive phenomenon. Robert Sternberg, who was a psychologist, came up with a triangular love theory arguing that love is made up of three different components. These components are commitment, intimacy, as well as passion.

The component of intimacy occurs when two individuals share confidences and other personal details of their lives. This is usually shown in romantic love ...

What is love? The answer to this question is sought as long as the humanity exists. Any other feeling can be described quite easily, but love is something that different people understand in their own way. It cannot be seen, touched, heard or smelled – it only can be felt.

We all know that there are different kinds of love – one can love a husband or a wife, children, job, a dog or Italian cuisine. In this essay, I am going to write about the differences in the types of love giving short explanations of how I understand them. The first ...

Attraction

A key aspect of attraction is physical attraction. According to Santrock (2011), men and women have different perceptions on the significance of outside beauty when looking for an intimate partner. Women in most cases tend to look for other traits such as financial stability, dependability and honesty while men on the other hand will focus more on the level of outside beauty and ability to cook. Beauty differs from one culture to another and within a culture. For instance, different people may be attracted to either slim or plump individuals. In western cultures, the idea of a beautiful woman is slender ...

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.” -Elie Wiesel, author of ‘Night’. I have this very beautiful passage from Goodreads about the definition of friendship. Contrary to romantic relationships, friendship is sharing all what you have. It is where you care for people genuinely without asking anything in return whilst love needs to be reciprocated for it to grow. Many people often confuse ‘friendship’ and ‘relationship’ as the same thing, these two worlds cannot merge as one. By definition according to Webster’s Dictionary of ...

- Introduction When literature is translated onto a stage, it becomes a play; it takes on a facet of reality that merely reading the words does not bring to the reader. Not every story translates perfectly into the medium of the play; plays have to have a lot of interaction between characters and environments to translate properly into theatre. Although there are certainly plays where not much happens, these plays are few and far between; most plays focus on the relationships between characters and their environments-- including the other characters that are present in the play. In theatre, the actors are ...

Soledad is often painted as a novel that was written in the vein of the great magical realist writers: Angie Cruz is thrown in with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Lara Esquivel. While these are prestigious names to be connected with, this description of Soledad as a work of pure magical realism weakens the underlying themes of the book rather than strengthening them: Soledad is the picture of a life-- of a way of life-- in New York City. The titular character, Soledad, wrestles with her feelings of love for her home and the people who fill it and the conflicting desire to escape ...

“Therefore, since each of these characteristics belongs to the good man in relation to himself, and he is related to his friend as to himself (for his friend is another self), friendship too is thought to be one of these attributes, and those who have these attributes to be friends. Whether there is or is not friendship between a man and himself is a question we may dismiss for the present; there would seem to be friendship in so far as he is two or more, to judge from the afore-mentioned attributes of friendship, and from the fact that the extreme ...

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to the review of the most important aspects in the psychology of relationships, in particular, the ones of liking and loving. It is important to consider the problem from different sides, as it has a wide scope of application and perceiving by different people. In particular, works of Gonzaga et al. (2006), Fletcher & Kerr (2010), Neff & Karney (2005), Mehrotra et al. (2011), Peck (2002), and Qi (2012) will be analyzed, all dealing with the problems of relationships, liking and loving. To fully research the questions, love will be defined from different perspectives with the background of ...

Introduction

Love is an intangible feeling that makes us vulnerable to danger, pain and suffering. However, love is the foundation of friendship; it brings us together and promotes cooperation. Friendship and cooperation is usually contaminated by betrayal and lies. The people we love can easily manipulate our trust. We have all experienced different kinds of love in our lives. As we grow up, our parents teach us how to love through words, actions and feelings. It is true when people say love is life, because life without love would be meaningless. Love is seen in various aspects of our ...

Introduction

Emily Bronte provided perhaps one of the vivid works of romantic desperation in the form of her novel Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights, being one of a kind due to the immediate death of Bronte shortly after release, features the story of the owner of two manor estates told by his housekeeper to his tenant, apparently intrigued by the mystery brought by the stormy countryside and the manor he is renting. Much of Wuthering Heights focused on events that happened within and between the two manors owned by the protagonist – Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, both separated yet nevertheless located within ...

A relationship of someone I knew very well was that which was developed from friendship to romantic love. Initially, a friend of mine joined a spiritual awareness group which aimed to enhance spirituality and faith through attending annual retreats, joining in volunteer programs, as well as promoting the Catholic faith. My friend, who we could call, Mildred, established a traditional friendship with all members, including Tito. What started as acquaintance slowly evolved and developed into a strong bond of friendship through frequent communication and interpersonal relationship that is expected from the activities of the members. Since both were single, they eventually started casual dating. ...

“The Lady With The Little Dog” by Anton Chekhov is the simple story of a man who stays in a loveless marriage but finally finds true love in an unhappy married woman, with whom he has an affair. Even though the man looks down on women classifying them as “an inferior race ” (31), he successfully falls in love. This love could be hazardous to his marriage with his wife, yet the nature of love triggers his unstoppable desire toward the woman. What his attitude is when he truly falls in love with the lover? Given images and diction, the story could ...

Led Zeppelin lyrics “thank you” and William Shakespeare’s sonnet 116 both discuss love and have several similarities. The compositions are both short poems whose common theme is love. Zeppelin’s mention of a woman as the target of his love and Shakespeare’s mention of, “marriage of true minds” further show that the poems mean erotic or romantic love between couples and not any other kind of love. The two poems explain the difficulties and conditions that true love is supposed to overcome and overlook. They are both extreme ideals of love stating that love never changes and never ...

Analysis of Love

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Abstract

Love is extremely difficult object for psychological analysis. About Love says a lot - frequency dictionaries of modern languages ​​attest to, this is one of the most commonly used words. At the same time, as noted by J. Cunningham and John Antil, all this is true for anyone wanting to also love still less than any other aspect of reality can be described in sufficient detail in the framework of a single discipline, it requires the knowledge of interdisciplinary studies, including data and methods are not only psychological, but also sociology, biology, ethnography, history, ...

The term myth is taken to refer to ancient life accounts that may either be true or false. Myths have no tangible evidence that backs them up; older people pass them to the younger generation who could either choose to believe or doubt them. Every culture has own mythology developed over time. Most of these mythologies encompass the heroes of their past, origin of the world, religion and legends. The stories tend to possess an influential symbolism which explains why they survive for a very long time. There exist numerous conceptual frame works as far as myths are concerned. ...

Love is difficult to define as a concept; it carries philosophical, social, cultural, political, biological and even spiritual meanings to many people for many different reasons. However, despite the differences in culture and attitude, love is an enduring concept that is found in most, if not all, modern cultures. As people, we are bound to others in a need for connection and bonding, but what fuels that connection? Is the thing that powers our need to love the same as mental illness? Is it a biological imperative or a social one, and is it healthy either way? It is my belief that love ...

Before you are some basic arguments against gay marriage: The first is that it defies what is believed to be an ancient tradition that has always been that of the union of a man and a woman. That definition is very basic and the general idea is if this rule which was supposedly created by god is broken there will be negative consequences. We believe that lifelong heterosexual monogamy is natural; gay relationships are not. Homosexual relationships are not natural in terms of they have no function in relation to procreation, they can’t have kids but that doesn’t make ...

Compare and Contrast

Introduction Marriage is an essential component of many societies, as it involves the union between two people in love with one another who would eventually create a family. As a form of social organization, marriage has become the subject of several controversies, with some outside of the purpose of romantic union. Notable pieces of literature attest to that fact, and this study aims to construct an analysis between two literary works – The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and A Marriage Proposal by Anton Chekhov, with both literary works establishing that marriage, as a social practice, has found associations with ...

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Introduction

Marriage is an essential component of many societies, as it involves the union between two people in love with one another who would eventually create a family. As a form of social organization, marriage has become the subject of several controversies, with some outside of the purpose of romantic union. Notable pieces of literature attest to that fact, and this study aims to construct an analysis between two literary works – The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and A Marriage Proposal by Anton Chekhov. This study uses both literary works to establish ...

Janie’s moments of transition

We see Janie as an old woman at the beginning of the novel. She struggles to control her language and voice which shows the quest for defining her life which is complicated and with no single resolution for her. She dreams and desires a lot but also chooses what to forget which makes it difficult to define. Janie in this case is victim of psychological fragmentation of black America and modernity. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she portrays an unformed and undefined character. Her ambitions are to have a life not controlled or defined by her nanny. She ...

Before you are some basic arguments against gay marriage: The first is that it defies what is believed to be an ancient tradition that has always been that of the union of a man and a woman. That definition is very basic and the general idea is if this rule which was supposedly created by god there will be negative consequences. What really is the peril of altering the definition of marriage, will god get angry? Seemingly god created gay people so why should he be mad when they try to attain the same standards of living as straight people. ...

Introduction – Thesis Statement

On the edge of discovering life, two youngsters from Verona fall in love for each other. The act of love that unites them generates various difficulties that determine the resistance of their families and friends to their relationship. Too young to know how to handle or control the difficulties of life, Rome and Juliet devoted to one another with love and passion, forgetting about everything, being solely concerned about their loving feelings. Love and passion are two strong themes that reside from William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, two strong and intense feelings that initiate the tragic act of the double ...

ABSTRACT

Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games tells the tale of young tribute Katniss Everdeen, who is forced into a state-sanctioned spectator sport where she must kill her fellow teenagers for the entertainment of the authoritarian Capitol. In The Hunger Games, the character of Katniss Everdeen distinguishes herself from other female protagonists in children's fiction in many ways. These differences will be discussed at length, mostly through the lens of the treatment of romantic relationships with regards to the protagonist in children's fiction. Through analysis of the primary text and the surrounding scholarly literature, The Hunger Games is shown to be an ...

On love

Love seems to have two aspects. There is such a thing as romantic love that spontaneously springs from a person’s inner depths. It is an attraction that one could have to particular person. As a result, one is willing to do anything for that person. One would only like to see that other person truly happy. On the other hand, there is another form of love. I would like to call it parental love. It is the kind of love that parents have for their children and that siblings have for each other. As with romantic love, the objective of ...

Although romantic love is an emotion that cannot be directly controlled, as suggested by Halwani (2010, p. 90) in his book Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage: An Introduction, I agree that romantic love is a moral issue not because of love per se, but because of what romantic love makes people do. It causes people to feel different kinds of desires, which when, acted on, can make such actions either morally right or wrong. As Halwani (2010, p. 90) suggests, love is permissible and not obligatory. He implies that romantic love is often something that just happens, ...

Introduction

Love takes many forms. It may be the love of a parent to a child, sibling love, friend love, love between two people, and more. Regardless of the type of love people share with and among each other, there are three basic components that make up love – commitment, intimacy, and passion. A love that is only about commitment, intimacy, or passion is bound to fail at the beginning, thus, people always strive to have at least two of the love components to have a happy and fulfilling, if not perfect, kind of love.

The Components of the Triangle of Love

Not to be confused with love triangle (which is ...

English 352

Dr. Champagne

Love in Shakespeare

Shakespeare used love as one of his main themes for each play he wrote. Love can be defined in many different ways. As we see in Romeo and Juliet, the love between two young characters is built on passion and an everlasting commitment even in death. In Hamlet we are shown a different type of love between Hamlet and his father. The audience is shown a son’s true love acted out in revenge for his father’s death. These plays explore the three different types of love Shakespeare wrote about - romantic love, familial love, ...

Araby is a short story by James Joyce about a young boy (unnamed; the narrator of the story) who has a secret romantic love for the sister of his friend (named Mangan). The story presents and contrasts two different settings – one being that of the frustrating everyday-life reality of the narrator and the other being a fanciful escape characterized by Mangan’s sister and the Araby bazaar. The dullness characterizing the narrator’s life, as portrayed by his lack of courage to admit his love for Mangan’s sister, the late arrival of his uncle who promised to lend him fare money for ...

Describe the factors of attraction. What attracts us to one another? Why are we less likely to befriend someone from another culture than someone from a similar background with a similar physical aesthetic? Be sure to identify and describe all six factors in attraction. Psychology of attraction is a complex and interesting kind of psychology, which provides people with answers to many important questions that are necessary to be understood by everyone seeking for harmonious relationships. In order to understand what attracts people to one another, it is necessary to describe six main factors of attraction. The first of them ...

A Doll’s House is built on lies, secrets, illusions, and delusions. The characters lie to each other and to themselves. Nora is keeping many secrets and lies from her husband, Torvald. Torvald is under the illusion and delusion that his wife is an innocent little creature that needs his guidance in all matters. Torvald has no idea about what is truly happening in his own house or in the lives of those close to him. For example, Torvald’s best friend, Dr. Rank, is keeping secrets from him even though Dr. Rank visits the house every day. Other ...

The Cavalier poets emerged in the middle of the 17th century, as followers of King Charles I, and they composed poetry which exemplified a sophisticated amalgamation of wit and clarity of expression, still retaining the necessary level of naiveté and elegance that did not cross the line of fine manners. Their polished lyrics mostly comprised of the courtly themes of praising a woman’s beauty and love, but also their sonnets were in debt to the more masculine themes of heroism in war, honor and the utter devotion to the king. The theme of friendship is one also infused within the ...

Realities of Love and Adultery in Christian Courts

Within the Christian world view, much has been discussed about adultery. The Ten Commandments include a direct condemnation--Thou shalt not commit adultery--and indirectly--Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. However, adultery is common throughout history and throughout society. In the Christian world, although frowned upon by the church, consensual adultery is a common sin amongst Christians. In several of the Lais attributed to Marie de France a theme of romantic love and adultery exists. Marie shows us that even in the middle ages, at least at the courts of nobility, there was a reality of adultery. However, like all sins, even if they ...

1. Paraphrase the poem: "Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey." Despite that these forms of beauty are not easily seen, they are unseen to me. The situation is just like that of a blind man, who cannot explain the appearance of a landscape. I am owed to them to them like a man in solitary in a quite room does to the middle of a busy city. I have owed to their familiarization for knowledge in my pure mind.

The goodness of a man is owed to pleasure and good acts. This quality is worth trustfulness irrespective of the burden of mystery which ...

The director of the film uses back-screen projection and camera tricks to enhance suspense and ensure that the audience is drawn deeper into the narrative. The film director does a good masterful job of blending all the diverse elements of vertigo together. The story in the film is a love story, mystery and a thriller all combined into one. The story deals with issues of obsession and the feeble nature of romantic love. The story has two styles which are repeatedly used in the film. The styles used are the memorable haunting score and the distinctive color scheme featuring reds and greens. ...

In the introduction to Hunter's Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness, the author announces his intention to combat oversimplifications that have arisen over the past few decades with regards to the scholarship of Shakespeare, wherein the attitude of Shakespeare itself at the time of his writing would actually reflect the politics and intent of the work itself (e.g. King Lear having a sad ending indicating Shakespeare being despondent at the time of its composition). "This study...will be an attempt to investigate one feature - the denouement in forgiveness - which is common to five of the later comedies" (Hunter 2). ...