Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Hmm. I've spent my day trawling the university and Headingley looking for tall, dark men, averaging 30 years of age, either in Victorian dress,or who would look good in it. I can report that my search gave out few positve results. Not sure if it was the locations I was trawling, or my chosen target which led to it all being fruitless. Probably a combination of the two. I'm afraid this is going to turn into an obsession, which I had thought I'd outgrown after I realised Shane from Westlife was never going to turn up in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, and ask for my hand, anymore than he was going to leave his wife for me.

I had a conversation with my flatmates last night about the wild passionate loves of Victorian, and earlier, novels, and why we just don't seem to experience them anymore. I decided that it was because now, if a bloke fancies a girl then chances are he'll just shag her and be done with it, whereas back then one simply wasn't ALLOWED to just shag someone. You had to marry them if you wanted to be with them, and you couldn't be with them until the marriage certificate was signed. Therefore, what probably would have started as an initial sexual attraction or admiration of someone would have built up over time and, fuelled by tension and anticipation, would have spilled over, as it were, into a passionate declaration of love and lust as the bloke simply HAD to be with the girl or he'd just die. One of my flatmates said that it was society that made the love so passionate. You were either seperated by social divides (as with all the best love stories) or by the confines of proper society and decorum (see above really), and it was this forced seperation that made the other person look so attractive and the whole situation so romantic and almost blown out of proportion. However, my other flatmate said that, basically, it just made a good story. Either that, or we need to read less Victorian and earlier novels and live in the real world, where shagging someone and being done wiht it isn't such a bad thing. I like the first two ideas better.

3 Comments:

  • At 9:53 am, Blogger K said…

    Hmm. So our societies has less passionate love affairs? Hmm, I think actually that I'll agree with that. Although I think more ppl now than then are looking to be in love with the partner they choose. I mean we're not all like Miss Bingley - though you can kinda see where she was coming from - Pemberly was Huge...

     
  • At 10:44 pm, Blogger boohoo said…

    I'm a big romantic but I have to sadly agree that society has lost its romance now... Not to say I don't still believe in the Knight In Shining Armour thing... I totally do -- and I know where he lives (kinda) ;)

     
  • At 12:28 pm, Blogger Marie said…

    I suggest reading Michel Faber's quite brilliant 'The Crimson Petal and the White' for an alternative view of what Victorian life might actually have been like, love and romance-wise. A good antidote to North and South-itis. Remember: in those days, nice women weren't supposed to enjoy sex. And usually didn't.

     

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