Tess Of The D Urbervilles And The Great Gatsby
‘For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.’
The assertion made here, being that true love does not involve physical actions but strong emotional bonds, is evident in both the novels, Tess of the D’Urbervilles as well as The Great Gatsby and in the poetry collection ‘Rapture’ as we see all three protagonists experience a volume of intense feelings towards the object of their affections; from the passionate love that they feel for their other half to sheer desperation of their others approval. However there are many physical obstacles that stand in their way, such as Alec and Tom who touch Tess and Daisy physically and materially but not emotionally. In Rapture, the lovers become …show more content…
In a similar way to the way Hardy uses Tess’s family tomb in ‘The Woman Pays’, to heighten the sense of a bleak future for Angel and Tess, Duffy uses a ‘grave’ to illustrate not only the powerful, reawakening nature of love, but the foreshadowing of the metaphorical death of their relationship. In this poem, the graphic images of ‘flesh and blood’ being restored to arise from a grave create a gothic image of the supremacy of love. Instead of using a noun such as ‘skin’ Duffy chooses the word ‘flesh’ to show the rawness of the emotions associated with death and she almost begins to compare these with the emotions indicative of love as she writes that the speaker is ‘hungry’ for the lovers ‘living kiss’. The adjective ‘living’ provokes one to think of the kiss of life. The lover breathes life and love into the carcass of her other, in order to restore what once was there; this kiss is so heart-rending that it touches not only her lips, but her soul as it rekindles the light of life within her. Contrastingly in Gatsby, the love felt by the protagonist is never truly reciprocated as it is for Tess and Angel and Duffy and her lover, as Daisy ultimately cannot admit that she wishes to be with Gatsby and not her husband Tom. However, the love that Gatsby feels, to him is pure and all engulfing, as it is what has driven him to seek corrupt means of becoming successful as he feels this is what is stopping himself and Daisy being together. Yet Gatsby’s idealised version of Daisy is what forces his love to stand the test of
The assertion made here, being that true love does not involve physical actions but strong emotional bonds, is evident in both the novels, Tess of the D’Urbervilles as well as The Great Gatsby and in the poetry collection ‘Rapture’ as we see all three protagonists experience a volume of intense feelings towards the object of their affections; from the passionate love that they feel for their other half to sheer desperation of their others approval. However there are many physical obstacles that stand in their way, such as Alec and Tom who touch Tess and Daisy physically and materially but not emotionally. In Rapture, the lovers become …show more content…
In a similar way to the way Hardy uses Tess’s family tomb in ‘The Woman Pays’, to heighten the sense of a bleak future for Angel and Tess, Duffy uses a ‘grave’ to illustrate not only the powerful, reawakening nature of love, but the foreshadowing of the metaphorical death of their relationship. In this poem, the graphic images of ‘flesh and blood’ being restored to arise from a grave create a gothic image of the supremacy of love. Instead of using a noun such as ‘skin’ Duffy chooses the word ‘flesh’ to show the rawness of the emotions associated with death and she almost begins to compare these with the emotions indicative of love as she writes that the speaker is ‘hungry’ for the lovers ‘living kiss’. The adjective ‘living’ provokes one to think of the kiss of life. The lover breathes life and love into the carcass of her other, in order to restore what once was there; this kiss is so heart-rending that it touches not only her lips, but her soul as it rekindles the light of life within her. Contrastingly in Gatsby, the love felt by the protagonist is never truly reciprocated as it is for Tess and Angel and Duffy and her lover, as Daisy ultimately cannot admit that she wishes to be with Gatsby and not her husband Tom. However, the love that Gatsby feels, to him is pure and all engulfing, as it is what has driven him to seek corrupt means of becoming successful as he feels this is what is stopping himself and Daisy being together. Yet Gatsby’s idealised version of Daisy is what forces his love to stand the test of