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Source A – short literary extracts about love
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of
sand, mine would be a universe of beaches… I have
stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have
taught myself languages because of you. I have made
my body strong because I thought you might be
pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with
only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might
glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in
years when the sight of you did not send my heart
careening against my rib cage. I have not known a
night when your face did not accompany me to sleep.
There has not been a morning when you did not
flutter behind my waking eyelids…”
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
“Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like
volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides,
you have to make a decision: You have to work out
whether your roots have so entwined together that it
is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because
this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is
not excitement. It is not the promulgation of
promises of eternal passion. That is just being ‘in
love,’ which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left
over when being ‘in love’ has burned away, and this
is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those who
truly love have roots that grow toward each other
underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have
fallen from their branches, they find that they are
one tree and not two.”
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honour and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words ‘make’ and ‘stay’ become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favorable answer to my offer of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any good – every good – with equal force.”
About Alice by Calvin Trillin
My first impression was that she looked more alive than anyone I’d ever seen. She seemed to glow. For one reason or another, I barely got to speak to her that evening. Two weeks later, though, after doing some intelligence work and juggling some obligations and dismissing as hearsay the vague impression of one mutual acquaintance that Alice was virtually engaged, I dashed back from a remote suburb to a party that I figured she’d be attending… in romantic matters, even those who need to depend mainly on dumb luck are usually up to one or two deliberate moves. At the second party, I did get to talk to her quite a lot. In fact, I must have hardly shut up. I was like a struggling comedian who had been informed that a booker for The Tonight Show was in the audience. Recalling that party years later, Alice would sometimes say, ‘You have never again been as funny as you were that night.’
A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters by Julian Barnes
“Love and truth, that’s the vital connection, love and truth. Have you ever told so much truth as when you were first in love? Have you ever seen the world so clearly? Love makes us see the truth, makes it our duty to tell the truth…. We must believe in it, or we’re lost. We may not obtain it, or we may obtain it and find it leaves us unhappy; we must still believe in it. If we don’t, then we merely surrender to the history of the world and to someone else’s truth.”
Source B: Hour by Carol Ann Duffy
Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour, bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich. We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch. For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hair like treasure on the ground; the Midas light turning your limbs to gold. Time slows, for here we are millionaires, backhanding the night so nothing dark will end our shining hour, no jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit hung from the blade of grass at your ear, no chandelier or spotlight see you better lit than here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor, but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw. Source C: Drunk by Carol Ann Duffy Suddenly the rain is hilarious. The moon wobbles in the dusk. What a laugh. Unseen frogs belch in the damp grass. The strange perfumes of darkening trees. Cheap red wine and the whole world a mouth. Give me a double, a kiss.
Source D: Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief. I am trying to be truthful. Not a cute card or a kissogram. I give you an onion. Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful as we are, for as long as we are. Take it. Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding‐ring, if you like. Lethal. Its scent will cling to your fingers, cling to your knife.
Source E: Text by Carol Ann Duffy I tend the mobile now like an injured bird. We text, text, text our significant words. I re‐read your fist, your second, your third, look for your small xx, feeling absurd. The codes we send arrive with a broken chord. I try to picture your hands, their image is blurred. Nothing my thumbs press will ever be heard. Source F: New Vows by Carol Ann Duffy From this day forth to unhold, to see the nothing in ringed gold, uncare for you when you are old. New vows you make me swear to keep – not ever wake with you, or sleep, or your body with my own worship; this living hand slipped from your glove, these lips sip never from our loving cup, I may not cherish, kiss; unhave, unlove… And all my worthless wordly goods to unendow… And who here present upon whom I call…
Source G: Examples of Shakespeare’s sonnets
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
Source H: To His Lost Lover by Simon Armitage
Now they are no longer any trouble to each other
he can turn things over, get down to that list of things that never happened, all of the lost
unfinishable business. For instance… for instance,
how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush
at the fall of her name in close company. How they never slept like buried cutlery –
two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together, or made the most of some heavy weather –
walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning, or did the gears while the other was driving.
How he never raised his fingertips to stop the segments of her lips
from breaking the news, or tasted the fruit
or picked for himself the pear of her heart, or lifted her hand to where his own heart
was a small, dark, terrified bird in her grip. Where it hurt.
Or said the right thing, or put it in writing.
And never fled the black mile back to his house before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,
then another, or knew her
favourite colour, her taste, her flavour,
and never ran a bath or held a towel for her, or soft‐soaped her, or whipped her hair
into an ice‐cream cornet or a beehive of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved
when he might have, or worked a comb where no comb had been, or walked back home
through a black mile hugging a punctured heart, where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand
to his butterfly heart in its two blue halves.
Or christened the Pole Star in her name, or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,
a pilot light, or stayed the night,
or steered her back to that house of his, or said “Don’t ask me how it is
I like you. I just might do.”
How he never figured out a fireproof plan, or unravelled her hand, as if her hand
were a solid ball of silver foil
and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it, and measured the trace of his own alongside it.
But said some things and never meant them – sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.
And left unsaid some things he should have spoken, about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.
Source I: This Is How We Date Now by Jamie Varon
We don’t commit now. We don’t see the point. They’ve always said there are so many fish in the sea, but never before has that sea of fish been right at our fingertips on social media. We can order up a human being in the same way we can order up pad thai on Just Eat. We think intimacy lies in a perfectly‐executed string of emoji. We think effort is a “good morning” text. We say romance is dead, because maybe it is, but maybe we just need to reinvent it. Maybe romance in our modern age is putting the phone down long enough to look in each other’s eyes at dinner. Maybe romance is deleting Tinder off your phone after an incredible first date with someone. Maybe romance is still there, we just don’t know what it looks like now.
When we choose—if we commit—we are still one eye wandering at the options. We want the beautiful cut of filet mignon, but we’re too busy eyeing the mediocre buffet, because choice. Because choice. Our choices are killing us. We think choice means something. We think opportunity is good. We think the more chances we have, the better. But, it makes everything watered‐down. Never mind actually feeling satisfied, we don’t even understand what satisfaction looks like, sounds like, feels like. We’re one foot out the door, because outside that door is more, more, more. We don’t see who’s right in front of our eyes asking to be loved, because no one is asking to be loved. We long for something that we still want to believe exists. Yet, we are looking for the next thrill, the next jolt of excitement, the next instant gratification.
We soothe ourselves and distract ourselves and, if we can’t even face the demons inside our own brain, how can we be expected to stick something out, to love someone even when it’s not easy to love them? We bail. We leave. We see a limitless world in a way that no generation before us has seen. We can open up a new tab, look at pictures of Portugal, pull out a Visa, and book a plane ticket. We don’t do this, but we can. The point is that we know we can, even if we don’t have the resources to do so. There are always other tantalizing options. Open up Instagram and see the lives of others, the life we could have. See the places we’re not traveling to. See the lives we’re not living. See the people we’re not dating. We bombard ourselves with stimuli, input, input, input, and we wonder why we’re miserable. We wonder why we’re dissatisfied. We wonder why nothing lasts and everything feels a little hopeless. Because, we have no idea how to see our lives for what they are, instead of what they aren’t.
And, even if we find it. Say we find that person we love who loves us. Commitment. Intimacy. “I love you.” We do it. We find it. Then, quickly, we live it for others. We tell people we’re in a relationship on Facebook. We throw our pictures up on Instagram. We become a “we.” We make it seem shiny and perfect because what we choose to share is the highlight reel. We don’t share the 3am fights, the reddened eyes, the tear‐stained bed sheets. We don’t write status updates about how their love for us shines a light on where we don’t love ourselves. We don’t tweet 140 characters of sadness when we’re having the kinds of conversations that can make or break the future of our love. This is not what we share. Shiny picture. Happy couple. Love is perfect.
Then, we see these other happy, shiny couples and we compare. We are The Emoji Generation. Choice Culture. The Comparison Generation. Measuring up. Good enough. The best. Never before have we had such an incredible cornucopia of markers for what it looks like to live the Best Life Possible. We input, input, input and soon find ourselves in despair. We’ll never be good enough, because what we’re trying to measure up to just does not exist. These lives do not exist. These relationships do not exist. Yet, we can’t believe it. We see it with our own eyes. And, we want it. And, we will make ourselves miserable until we get it.
So, we break up. We break up because we’re not good enough, our lives aren’t good enough, our relationship isn’t good enough. We swipe, swipe, swipe, just a bit more on Tinder. We order someone up to our door just like a pizza. And, the cycle starts again. Emoji. “Good morning” text. Intimacy. Put down the phone. Couple selfie. Shiny, happy couple. Compare. Compare. Compare. The inevitable creeping in of latent, subtle dissatisfaction. The fights. “Something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is.” “This isn’t working.” “I need something more.” And, we break up. Another love lost. Another graveyard of shiny, happy couple selfies.
On to the next. Searching for the elusive more. The next fix. The next gratification. The next quick hit. Living our lives in 140 characters, 5 second snaps, frozen filtered images, four minute movies, attention here, attention there. More as an illusion. We worry about settling, all the while making ourselves suffer thinking that anything less than the shiny, happy filtered life we’ve been accustomed to is settling. What is settling? We don’t know, but we don’t want it. If it’s not perfect, it’s settling. If it’s not glittery filtered love, settling. If it’s not Pinterest‐worthy, settling.
We realize that this more we want is a lie. We want phone calls. We want to see a face we love absent of the blue dim of a phone screen. We want slowness. We want simplicity. We want a life that does not need the validation of likes, favorites, comments, upvotes. We may not know yet that we want this, but we do. We want connection, true connection. We want a love that builds, not a love that gets discarded for the next hit. We want to come home to people. We want to lay down our heads at the end of our lives and know we lived well, we lived our lives. This is what we want even if we don’t know it yet.
Yet, this is not how we date now. This is not how we love now.
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Source K: Elizabethan wedding customs
Elizabethan Wedding Customs ‐ Arranged Marriages and Contracts
Just as today a woman's wedding was one of the most important
days of her life. The major difference in Elizabethan wedding customs
compared to a modern day Western marriage is that the woman had
very little, if any, choice in who her husband might be. Marriages
were frequently arranged so that both families involved would
benefit. Marriages would be arranged to bring prestige or wealth to
the family. The children of landowners would be expected to marry
to increase the size of the acreage. A surprising fact is that young
men were treated in a similar way as to women! Many couples would
meet for the very first time on their wedding day! This particular
Elizabethan custom usually applied to the nobility.
Elizabethan Wedding History ‐ The importance of marriage to an
Elizabethan woman
During the Elizabethan era of history women were very much 'second
class citizens'. Regardless of their social standing they were expected
to marry. Some single women were thought to be witches by their
neighbours... Elizabethan marriages were sometimes arranged
immediately following a baby’s birth via a formal betrothal.
Elizabethan Wedding Customs ‐ The Age of Consent
With parental permission it was legal for boys to marry at 14 and girls
at 12 although it was not usual or traditional for marriages at such
young ages. The age of consent was 21 and boys would generally not
marry until this age.