Unhappy Marriages




Divorce Meme



After reading the topics for this week I found that Modern Love by George Meredith seemed to really entertain and interest me. The couple in the text seemed to be very unhappy in their marriage, but the couple made no effort to get a divorce. A reader can quickly tell there is something wrong with the couples marriage from the third line in the first sonnet. “The strange low sobs that shook their common bed,” both of them were just seeming to go through the motions. Neither of them had the guts to move forward with a divorce since at this time divorce was expensive. Another reason why many people did not get a divorce during this time was due to opinions of others. 

Throughout the reading readers were exposed to mostly the man's view and his thoughts. He seemed to make different shifts through the sonnets. At some points he could be sympathetic to his wife, and other times it seemed like he was feeling bad for himself being in this position. In the seventeenth sonnet he says “ At dinner she is hostess, I am host. Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps the topics over intellectual deeps In buoyancy afloat.” I felt like when this was said that it was a chance for him to talk badly about his wife. He stated that he was the host meaning he did all the work, while she was being pampered to. 

Divorce is a very common occurrence in our world today, although it is still looked down upon in some cases. Comparing this text to our world today divorce is very different with the two time periods. In both cases divorce was expensive, but I feel like it is more of a normal thing now. Many different factors go into a couple wanting to get a divorce. A few are cheating, lying, and just being unhappy with the other person. In this text Modern Love we were exposed to all of these factors. I was not surprised that the two were not happy simply because the husband would make some very rude comments. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we really only had one side of the story. Most of the text was from the perspective of the husband in both third person and first. All stories have two sides, and the wife's side was shown hardly at all. I would have loved for George Meredith to write from the wife’s point of view, but this was the wrong time period to do so. Women during this time had little to no rights, and did as they were told by their husbands.


https://www.insider.com/divorce-rate-changes-over-time-2019-1 

This website shows how divorce rates have changed dramatically with time.


Comments

  1. Great work! I like that you pointed out the persepctive of the man and identified the fact that there are two sides to every story. You made a good point that divorce today is different than it was during the Late Victorian era. Nice writing!

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