Professor Julie Brinson
ENGL11104
3 November 2013
These Vows Are A’ Changin’
An Examination of the Role of Marriage through Literary Analysis
Marriage...it is what brings us together today…
Princess Bride It 's not a lack of love...but a lack of friendship that makes marriages unhappy.
Friedrich Nietzche You know it’s never fifty-fifty in a marriage...someone always falls in love first...puts someone on a pedestal first...someone is just along for the ride.
Jodi Picoult If you want to start a heated, contentious argument, ask someone their opinion about marriage. Should homosexuals be afforded the right? Should persons be able to divorce on "no-fault" grounds, or should marriage …show more content…
Is Mallard, the voice of Chopin so unhappy that is takes the death of her ties with mankind to become truly alive? What about Nina Harker, forced to remove herself from traditional society, and her husband, in Dracula? Hacker suggests that, "[…] there is a need to reorganize marriage […] to fit [new] economic and political institutions (153.) So, perhaps marriage, as defined by Augustine, no longer provided a basis for societal structure. If this question existed at this point in history, would it not be so much more into the progression of social revolution within the twentieth century.
As the Victorian/Gilded Age come to an end, and as the modern era began with start of a new century, marriage found itself on the cusp of questioning. Society found old ways no longer surviving, two great wars made sure of that. As the "Roaring 20 's" came about, a distinct questioning of what were the roles of gender would remain, and which would require change. Daisy of Fitzgerald 's Great Gatsby often refers to her marriage of that of a bruised finger (175,) annoying and barely tolerable. Gone are the veiled references of happiness without a spouse in love; now love and companionship are that is