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2. What examples does Trotter use? Which ones are general and
which are specific? What additional examples can you think of,
taken from what you have read and what you have seen in
movies and on television?
3. What are some specific examples of the types of love for which
Trotter does not provide his own examples?
Romantic Love
1 The American family is supposed to be founded on the ro-
mantic love of the marital partners. Traces of a more pragmatic
attitude persist in the American upper classes, where daughters
are expected to marry “well”—that is, to a male who is eligible
by reason of family background and earning potential. Most
Americans, however, tend to look askance at anyone who mar-
ries for money or some other practical reason in which love
plays no part.
2 Happily enough, romantic love defies a clinical definition. It
is a different kind of love, though, from the love you have for your
parents or your dog. It involves physical symptoms, such as
pounding heart and sexual desire, and psychological symptoms,
such as obsessive focus on one person and a disregard for any re-
sulting social or economic risks. Our culture encourages us to
look for this love—to find that “one and only,” perhaps even
through “love at first sight.” The phenomenon of romantic love
occurs when two people meet and find one another personally
and physically attractive. They become mutually absorbed, start
to behave in what may appear to be a flighty, even irrational man-
ner, decide that they are right for one another, and may then enter
a marriage whose success is expected to be guaranteed by their
enduring passion. Behavior of this kind is portrayed and warmly
endorsed throughout American popular culture, by books, maga-
zines, comics, records, popular songs, movies, and TV.
3 Romantic love is a noble idea, and it can certainly help pro-
vide a basis for the spouses to “live happily ever after.” But
since marriage can equally well be founded on much more prac-
tical considerations, why is romantic love of such importance
in the modern world? The reason seems to be that it has the fol-
3. What are the three cultural needs or causes (also called func-
tions) that make romantic love useful in American society?
kids just like his mother or who gambles away the family sav-
ings just like his mother. Or he may choose a slender wife who
seems unlike his obese mother but then turns out to have other
addictions that destroy their mutual happiness.
4 A man and a woman bring to their marriage bed a blended
concoction of conscious and unconscious memories of their
parents’ lives together. The human way is to compulsively re-
peat and recreate the patterns of the past. Sigmund Freud so
well described the unhappy design that many of us get trapped
in: the unmet needs of childhood, the angry feelings left over
from frustrations of long ago, the limits of trust and the recur-
rence of old fears. Once an individual senses this entrapment,
there may follow a yearning to escape, and the result could be a
broken, splintered marriage.
5 Of course people can overcome the habits and attitudes that
developed in childhood. We all have hidden strengths and amaz-
ing capacities for growth and creative change. Change, however,
requires work—observing your part in a rotten pattern, bringing
difficulties out into the open—and work runs counter to the
basic myth of marriage: “When I wed this person all my prob-
lems will be over. I will have achieved success and I will be-
come the center of life for this other person and this person will
be my center, and we will mean everything to each other for-
ever.” This myth, which every marriage relies on, is soon ex-
posed. The coming of children, the pulls and tugs of their de-
mands on affection and time, place a considerable strain on that
basic myth of meaning everything to each other, of merging to-
gether and solving all of life’s problems.
6 Concern and tension about money take each partner away
from the other. Obligations to demanding parents or still-
dependent-upon parents create further strain. Couples today
must also deal with all the cultural changes brought on in re-
cent years by the women’s movement and the sexual revolu-
tion. The altering of roles and the shifting of responsibilities
have been extremely trying for many marriages.
7 These and other realities of life erode the visions of marital
bliss the way sandstorms eat at rock and the ocean nibbles
away at the dunes. Those euphoric, grand feelings that accom-
pany romantic love are really self-delusions, self-hypnotic
dreams that enable us to forge a relationship. Real life, failure at
work, disappointments, exhaustion, bad smells, bad colds and
hard times all puncture the dream and leave us stranded with
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our mate, with our childhood patterns pushing us this way and
that, with our unfulfilled expectations.
8 The struggle to survive in marriage requires adaptability,
flexibility, genuine love and kindness and an imagination
strong enough to feel what the other is feeling. Many marriages
fall apart because either partner cannot imagine what the other
wants or cannot communicate what he or she needs or feels.
Anger builds until it erupts into a volcanic burst that buries the
marriage in ash.
9 It is not hard to see, therefore, how essential communica-
tion is for a good marriage. A man and a woman must be able to
tell each other how they feel and why they feel the way they do;
otherwise they will impose on each other roles and actions that
lead to further unhappiness. In some cases, the communication
patterns of childhood—of not talking, of talking too much, of
not listening, of distrust and anger, of withdrawal—spill into
the marriage and prevent a healthy exchange of thoughts and
feelings. The answer is to set up new patterns of communica-
tion and intimacy.
10 At the same time, however, we must see each other as indi-
viduals. “To achieve a balance between separateness and close-
ness is one of the major psychological tasks of all human beings
at every stage of life,” says Dr. Stuart Bartle, a psychiatrist at
the New York University Medical Center.
11 If we sense from our mate a need for too much intimacy, we
tend to push him or her away, fearing that we may lose our
identities in the merging of marriage. One partner may suffo-
cate the other partner in a childlike dependency.
12 A good marriage means growing as a couple but also grow-
ing as individuals. This isn’t easy. Richard gives up his interest
in carpentry because his wife, Helen, is jealous of the time he
spends away from her. Karen quits her choir group because her
husband dislikes the friends she makes there. Each pair clings
to each other and is angry with each other as life closes in on
them. This kind of marital balance is easily thrown as one or
the other pulls away and divorce follows.
13 Sometimes people pretend that a new partner will solve the
old problems. Most often extramarital sex destroys a marriage
because it allows an artificial split between the good and the
bad—the good is projected on the new partner and the bad is
dumped on the head of the old. Dishonesty, hiding and cheating
create walls between men and women. Infidelity is just a symp-
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
305633_CH03pp031-049 01/25/05 1:29 PM Page 41
6. What are the components of (and thus the causes of) a good
marriage?
looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But
she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years
to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened
and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
14 There would be no one to live for during those coming
years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful
will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and
women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a
fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the
act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief mo-
ment of illumination.
15 And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not.
What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery,
count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she
suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
16 “Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.
17 Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips
to the keyhole, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the
door! I beg; open the door—you will make yourself ill. What are
you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”
18 “Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drink-
ing in a very elixir of life through that open window.
19 Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her.
Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would
be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.
It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life
might be long.
20 She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s im-
portunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she
carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She
clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended the
stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
21 Some one was opening the door with a latchkey. It was
Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly
carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the
scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been
one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’s
quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
22 But Richards was too late.
23 When the doctors came they said she had died of heart
disease—of joy that kills.
Her nose was red and it was runny, her squinty eyes were crossed,
Her hair was long and matted, her upper teeth were lost.
When us boys would tease her, she’d laugh and slap her sides,
She was always left for walkin’, no one would give her rides.
On the road one day she passed me, and I saw her drop some
mail,
I hollered out to tell her, as she veered off on a trail.
When she didn’t hear me, I thought I’d have some fun,
I’d read old Anna’s letter, I’d take the words and run.
Chorus
I settled by a shade tree, I opened up her mail,
It was written by her husband, he was doin’ time in jail.
She still looked and smelled so awful, but I had a new concern,
If a man could love old Anna, I had much more to learn.
Chorus
2. Why does it not occur to the narrator that Anna Banana might
love and be loved?
*From the country song “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?”
✺ Reading-Related Writing
“How Do I Love Thee?”
1. Write an essay about a love you are familiar with that can be
defined by one of the eight variations in Sternberg’s system.
2. Compare and contrast (see page 24 for techniques) two loves
you are familiar with, according to definitions within Stern-
berg’s system.
“Romantic Love, Courtship, and Marriage”
3. Write an essay in which you relate all or most of the six “char-
acteristics that seem to attract people to one another” to a mar-
riage or a relationship you are familiar with. Your example may
support Robertson’s views, or it may show that a marriage can
be very good even though the partners do not share several of
the six characteristics. (See Analysis by Division, page 18, and
Cause and Effect, page 21.)
4. Write about a marriage that failed because the partners were
too different, that is, they shared few or none of the six charac-
teristics. (See Comparison and Contrast, page 24, and Cause
and Effect, page 21.)
5. Write an essay in which you argue that the assets that prospec-
tive mates try to “sell” each other on (appearance, charm, com-
mon interests, career prospects) either are or are not more im-
portant than the six characteristics that attract people to each
other. Use references to the article as well as your own exam-
ples. (See Analysis by Division, page 18, and Exemplification,
page 18.)
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305633_CH03pp031-049 01/25/05 1:29 PM Page 48
13. Pose as the husband and write a eulogy that he would deliver at
his wife’s funeral. Include examples of the love they shared.
Through his words, have him reveal what type of husband he
was. For instance, he may reveal himself as a well-intentioned
yet controlling person, but he will not recognize himself as
such. (See Exemplification, page 18, and Narration, page 15.)
14. Write an essay in which you argue that Mrs. Mallard’s reaction
is far more likely to be experienced by a woman than by a man;
or argue against that view. (See Argument, page 28.)
15. Discuss the issue of whether, if the roles were reversed, Mr.
Mallard could die of the same shock that killed Mrs. Mallard.
16. Assume that Mrs. Mallard has empty love and Mr. Mallard has
companionate love (see “How Do I Love Thee?” page 31) and
compare and contrast these two characters in relation to the
story’s theme. (See Comparison and Contrast, page 24.)
17. Explain Mrs. Mallard’s thirst for freedom. What would she like
to get away from and where would she like to go? Might
Roiphe’s essay “Why Marriages Fail” shed some light on Mrs.
Mallard’s situation? Is Sternberg’s system (described in Trotter’s
“How Do I Love Thee?”) useful in providing a framework for
discussing the elements of love that concern Mrs. Mallard? (See
Analysis by Division, page 18.)