Government in Marriage Research Paper
It can be hard to think about marriage as anything other than a man and a woman in love; I completely understand. Looking back in history, this is the way it has been for thousands of years, or at least that’s how it appears. The idea of “traditional marriage” we hear of is not how it has always been, and government, or even the church, has definitely not always been involved. Marriage, as we have it today, is so deeply invaded by governmental policies and regulations that it truly does not even closely resemble this idea of “traditional marriage”. Marriage is a practice that has evolved dramatically since its creation, and has gone from something that was entirely in the hands of the people to something controlled by government. While discussion concerning marriage usually involved marriage equality, as Keith Ablow (2013) states, there is a “…bigger debate we must have: Why was government so intrusive as to be involved in marriage, in the first place, and shouldn’t government divorce itself from the concept of sanctioning marriage, altogether?”
Despite Clarissa Dalloway’s constant endeavor to throw herself fully into life in the present, she is constantly bothered by the past – whether her possible regret over denying Peter Walsh, her occasional unsureness about Richard, or her constant return to her kiss with Sally. I think Mrs. Dalloway is all about being hung-up on the past. The three main characters are all subject to some sort of hauntings from their past: Clarissa, Peter, and the literal hauntings in the case of Septimus Smith. For Clarissa, her relationship with Sally – the kiss in particular, which she calls “the most exquisite moment of her whole life” – has affected her in such a way that, even while she is not reflecting on it, the moment impacts her daily thoughts and activities (Woolf 35). Her hang-ups concerning this moment prevent her from ever being able to experience life like she did at that moment. The only thing that can remove this barrier is a moment even more powerful than the kiss; this comes in the form of Septimus’ suicide and her metaphysical death.
In Walden, Thoreau spends his time in nature digging and delving past superficial things – institutions, weeds, ice, water – to find truth and reality. He believes that this submersion is necessary to truly understand the Earth and subsequently understand the Heavens through ascension. In one way, he does this through his removal of the weeds so that he can “[make] the earth say beans instead of grass” (Thoreau 148). He uses the downward digging to create an upward motion in the form of beans. Somewhere through his time in semi-isolation, his thinking changes from needing to control this ascension to realizing that the earth or mankind will naturally express the downward or inner truth through upward or outer motion. His revelation of this natural – and real – motion comes around the time when he sees the thawing sand and notices how “perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel” (287). He sees just how the earth expresses itself and how man is the same, each in a unique way.
Shakespeare’s King Lear tells the stories of a pair of family tragedies: the madness and death of both Gloucester and Lear. They both mirror and contradict one another throughout the play. We see each feeling betrayed by the child who truly cares about them, while going along with the lies of the other. The theme of being stripped to nothing recurs through the play, whether by outside forces or one doing so willingly. Lear and Gloucester are both stripped to nothing and go into madness. Lear’s descent begins when his daughter Goneril would not let him stay with her. It truly kicks in when both daughters leave him in the storm, making him realize that Cordelia was the daughter he should have counted on. Gloucester begins to become mad when he loses his eyes, but his realization that Edgar is his good son is what fully strips him.
Frost was being typical Frost when he wrote “The Hill Wife”. It shows the slow deterioration of a woman’s marriage and the loss of herself to darkness. She tries multiple times to grab on to something, but everything, ultimately, falls apart in a way similar to what we see in Frost’s “The Wood Pile”. The difference is that the protagonist in “The Wood Pile” lives for finding new ways to hold on, while the wife uses it all up and falls away into chaos. Using Frost terms, she uses up all of her metaphors, her ways of keeping the darkness at bay, and is succumbed to the darkness.
Read by children and adults everywhere the Harry Potter series is truly beloved; beloved on a level that much of today’s literature has not reached. While the books were written with a younger audience in mind, it is widely popular among adults, making it a truly unique piece of literature. To the casual reader the books lack a great amount of complexity, only seeing a relatable and charming piece of art. Despite this surface simplicity, the series is actually incredibly intricate. JK Rowling has put an impressive amount of depth in the world she created; a depth that is unseen by most readers. A lot of thought is put into every single part of her books: the characters, the setting, the plot itself, and an enormously vast history or backstory.
Josh Oliver 