Love Is a Fallacy

It is likely that some would read Max Schulman’s essay entitled “Love Is a Fallacy,” and view it as ‘anti-women.’ Others would be just as likely to see it as ‘anti-men.’ Objectively speaking, neither view is entirely correct. This is because, equally strong arguments can be made for both cases. A more accurate conclusion is that the essay is in fact both anti-women and anti- men. The events recounted in the essay confirm this to be logical. There are most definitely elements of anti-women sentiments in the writing. The narrator makes the character of Polly Espy out to be rather unintelligent. He certainly does not see her as mental stimulation worthy of what he sees as his superior intellect. Indeed, the narrator seems to view most women in such a way; never thinking that any girl could possibly meet his expectations. The fact that he represents the typical woman as being comparatively dim as he sees Polly is nothing short of anti-women. Of course, the essay is not without its anti-men elements as well. The essay centers around a man who perpetuates his own pigeonhole. The narrator himself is represented as what has become something of a stereotypical ‘condescending man.’ It is often the case that a man sees himself (and indeed his gender) to be altogether superior to the feminine sex. It has been put before us so often that it is, in its own right, a pigeonhole; and the narrator of the essay is the very picture of that cliché. Whatever conclusions can be drawn from the assertions that Shulman’s essay “Love Is A
Fallacy” is anti-women or anti-men are unreliable, and truly inaccurate. The fact of the matter is that equally forceful cases can be made that its subject matter contains both anti-women and anti- men implications. The most concrete argument that can be made on the subject is that the essay is just as much anti-women as it is anti-men. Its characters clearly portray both