Marriage and Love Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Marriage and Love - Essay Example What is important to note, for purposes of this essay, is that fact that romantic love was associated with marriage and marital fulfillment as a growing trend in an increasingly individualistic world rather than love itself. Love, in short, is more than a romantic or idealistic state of mind; indeed, as pointed out by Duby and Dunnet, love has, throughout history, been associated with such notions as respect, admiration, and a sense of security (1994: 37). The preliminary step, therefore, is to define love as it has been understood historically rather than to rely on unnecessarily inaccurate and narrow definitions as commonly portrayed in the mass media. This essay will argue that love is more comprehensive than lesser notions such as romantic love and that it can therefore function as the basis of a successful and enduring marriage; more specifically, this essay will argue that the media has idealized the notion of love more than is true of the concept itself and that the marital institution, as it has evolved over time, is more than capable of being founded and sustained about this broader concept of love. As an initial matter, there is no question that marriage has been sustained by a variety of different factors and motivations throughout history; these motivations have varied and differed according to cultural contexts, local conditions, and sociological stages of development. Although often portrayed negatively y the western media, arranged marriages have been the historical and cultural norm historically; this is true not only in cultures and countries traditionally associated with arranged marriages, such as in India, but in embryonic western nations and cultures as well. These arranged marriages were frequently motivated by such notions as pooling family wealth, maintaining social status or cementing political alliances, nurturing the continuation of certain religious or ideological communities, or simply continuing well-established cultural or local traditions (Shumway, 2003: 118). The arranged marriage was characterized by an oversight function performed by the older generati on and the opinions or the preferences of the younger generation were subservient. This is not to say that the opinions of the people to be married were wholly irrelevant, though is many cases they were definitely of lesser value, but that the older generation relied upon considerations that were not consistent with modern notions of romantic or erotic love. It cannot be argued, however, that love as it was more generally known was irrelevant to marriage; more particularly, as noted by De Munck, men and women have fallen in love for reasons more compelling than an erotic attraction or a sudden physical or emotional impulse (1998: 78). Those whom would reduce love to the romantic concept exploited by capitalist media companies would do a great disservice to love and marriage, to people's individual judgment and reason, and to the sociological sciences. The marital institution did not become a prisoner of sudden irrational impulses; quite the contrary, as outlined by Wexman By the early twentieth century the emergence of a public sphere fostered the development of a youth culture centered on courtship rituals largely cut off from supervision by the older