Ovids Metamorphisis

Love and The Consequences

The compilation of stories in Ovid's Metamorphosis are unlike any epic of it's time. They all fit together to form one huge unifying story with a lot of different meanings and themes. Throughout the entire epic, one reoccurring theme that is prevalent to me is the agony of love. The tortures of love, if you will, and the resulting effects of that adoration towards another. Love is one thing that remains consistent throughout the entire epic. It doesn't arise as just an emotion and it's almost always the reason for a transformation. Although the situations differ, the love one feels for another seems to have negative consequences for one or both parties involved. Ovid portrays love to be a negative thing, instead of exemplifying the positive characteristics we attribute to it today. He makes it almost dangerous or destabilizing because of the chaos that come with the emotion whether mental, physical, or emotional. Through Ovid's Metamorphosis the majority of the characters experience love in some way, shape or form. Relative to them all is the happy ending love fails to deliver. It's almost better to not be in love because nothing good comes from it. The idea of “Love” is an intense or deep feeling of affection and is usually a pleasant thing. Today's society has been conditioned to associate love with good and happiness, but the metamorphosis challenges that and shows another side of love. It explores almost all possible aspects of sexuality and incorporates love into the situation to come to a unifying result or resolution.

The ways in which love is shown vary throughout the epic from character-to-character, but there are some generalities that can be made about them all. The men in the stories, for example, display their love in completely different ways than the women do. The males in the Metamorphosis display their love and affection in a savage or cruel way. They rape, transform or mutilate anything that peaks their interest without any sense of remorse. Whether they have to transform (in the case of Jove turning into a bull to rape Europa), or something is transformed because of them (Daphne getting transformed into a tree to escape Apollo), it's all in efforts to fulfill the desire they have which is associated with love. They lie to their wives, manipulate whomever needs to be manipulated and sneak around as if they cant control themselves whenever they are aroused. Love changes your behavior, mindset and even way of thinking. These are the effects of love but can be considered the agonies of love as well. Jupiter, the King of Gods, is transforming women into cows, lying, and creeping around as to not alert his wife Juno. This all because he was aroused by the nymph, but his love was with Juno so to not jeopardize that, he has to go through extra measures to ensure she doesn't find out. The nymph gets killed to ensure Jupiter's innocence and Juno continues to get cheated on without any concrete evidence of her husbands ways; all because or resulting from an emotion referred to as “love” On the other hand, the women in the Metamorphosis display their love in a more reasonable way, but still with a lot of extremities. When the women in the epic display their love it becomes immense force in which nothing else can surpass. The idea or feeling of love overcomes them and they get lost in its rapture. Nothing else seems to matter except the one in they are in love with and they put that love before themselves or their family. Their values and/or morals dissipate and the affection felt is all that remains. Medea kills her children from the love of Jason, Scylla scalps her own father's head and betrays her people because she was in love with Minos; for women, to keep that feeling of love-anything is necessary. They will go to any lengths, and are happy to live with any consequences of their action; because to them it seems worth it. Love shows no boundaries and even leaves them powerless to incest. It causes daughters to lay with their fathers (Myrrha) and sisters to lay with brothers (Byblis). What makes love so powerful is the people involved or aware don't even see a problem with their actions. They are happy with the emotions they are feeling and are more than willing to act on them, no matter how obscure it is. These feelings almost always lead to misery but no one can resits. The different ways in which men and women love shows that love carries more value or attachment to the women as apposed to the men. The men act of out instinct, to say; more of “the spur of the moment” situations in which their love leads to chaos. The women take their time with their love and seem to put more into to it, maybe that's why their situations are more drastic than the males in most cases. The women are more changed by love than the men are. Love most certainly promotes change because change comes with it. After the men in the Metamorphosis display their love they can continue with life as normal if they make a few adjusts to reality (transformations) and/or maybe tell a lie. The woman's reality is completely changed from being in love. Whether acts out of love or actions from love, the magnitude of love is so intense that any adjustments become life altering. They are either exiled, killed or transformed but in any event, life will not resume as it did before the feelings were felt. The men in the Metamorphosis love isn't as strong as the women because they experience it more frequently. Most of the male characters are very promiscuous in their nature and could be considered less stable than the females. Whenever they are stimulated in any way they act on it regardless of how the other person or thing feels about it. Ovid portrays the male masculinity by allowing the to dominate whoever or whatever they feel. Even if the person or thing is opposed to the love, they have to no choice but to deal with it and accept whatever change comes with it. The women in the Metamorphosis aren't as immoral as the males are. Feeling and emotions are more important to them which is why their love is different. They are portrayed as more unlikely to commit adultery, although they have their own vices which the men do not share. Love controls the women in a different way than the women. It makes them do things that seem alien to their nature. They aren't as promiscuous so they don't part take in love as often. When the emotions and feeling do arrive, they are foreign to the women so they act out of character. They commit incest, murder, manipulate and deceive all because of the love they feel for another. The women seem to create problems out of the love they feel, and the men fix problems from the love they've felt. This all relating back to the amount of times love is felt. Since the women value it different from the men and experience it less, when they are in love nothing else matters; the men experience it often so its not as meaningful and therefore less important. Love changes the loved and the lover and since Ovid portrays love in a negative light, its usually in a negative way. If you had no prior knowledge of the idea of love and only had Ovid Metamorphosis to go from, you'd think love was a curse that no one could escape from. It always seems to lead to sadness or chaos when it becomes apart of the equation, and things go from bad to worse. It affects whomever without any discrimination and could be interpreted as being more powerful than the gods because love controls them at points. In Ovid's Metamorphosis, there is no element stronger than love. It exists in almost every tale and drastically changes the lives of those involved. Love is uncontrollable and without Cupid ,you cant really dictate who/how you love; it just seems to happen. The things love makes a person do is the important aspect of the emotion in Ovid. Just about every instance of love ends in tragedy or heart-break and it seems to hurt more than it helps. Even though everyone part takes in the emotion, nobody (not even the Gods) can seem to figure out the complication involved with it. I think Ovid portrays love this way for one of two reasons; the first being to show the incredible power of love. In the Metamorphosis love conquers all, whether it's in a positive or negative way. No one has the power to control love but Cupid but he too makes mistakes. The love one feels for another leads to death or disaster but certainly never a happy ending. I think Ovid does this to show that love does not equate to happiness. It's actually hard to stay happy when your in love because it's no longer just about your, but your significant other as well. You now have to compensate for two sets of emotions and if you value your love, your going to try your best to do so. Love in the Metamorphosis also leads to transformations or death. This can be interpreted as Ovid trying to portray the ways in which love changes us into something different; or to say that love is bigger than life. The only other reason I could think Ovid portrays love so negatively in the Metamorphosis is the things that were going on around him as he was writing it. It's a known fact that the world surrounding the writer can effect/influence his writing and Ovid is no different. During the time the Metamorphosis was written, Ovid's emperor made major attempts at controlling love though legal laws to promote marriage. They made right and wrong ways to love and punished those who go out of line. The goal was to eliminate adulterous love to ensure heirs in the upper class. Ovid could have portrayed love in such a negative light due tho this. If handle the wrong way love could spell disaster, but trying to regulate it will definitely lead to problems. Love is a natural thing and should be treated as so. When you place legal bonds on something so fragile it has not choice but to corrupt it and I believe Ovid was trying to show that in the Metamorphosis.