The Romantic Heart Case
Regardless of the time period in which we live, emotion plays a large part in our lives. Shakespeare’s literary works were often about romance, love as well as revenge and Jonathan Swift wrote about the veil of love and what was truly found behind it. This paper will analyze three separate literary works and the ways in which emotion play a part in all of them.
In “The Lady’s Dressing Room”, Jonathan Swift tells the story of a man named Strephon would is in love with a woman named Celia. He portrays Celia as a Goddess and compares her to lace and the finer things. He is shocked at the sight that he discovers in Celia’s dressing room and his findings change the way he feels about her. “The Lady’s Dressing Room” depicts the private relationship between a man and a woman, and takes a deeper look at whether the attraction is real love or whether it’s based solely upon appearances and lust. True love is believed to delve beyond the surface and is a love that is composed of the good as well as the bad. It’s a love that encompasses both physical beauty as well as the emotional ugliness that might lie beneath.
Swift’s poem is filled with many emotions and the main character, Strephon exudes many of them throughout the poem. He begins the poem demonstrating adoration which later turns into unpleasant surprise which soon results in disgust. The poem uses literary verse in order to convey Strephon’s deep emotions. Swift also uses satire and writes about less pleasant things as opposed to the beauty that poems generally consist of. “The Lady’s Dressing Room” explains how on the inside we are all a far cry from how society might define what beauty truly is. This poem relays the emotions that regardless of the importance that society has placed upon us, we are all in fact just human beings capable of being ugly to the world. Swift believes that human race possesses no innate beauty and that there is instead just ugliness. Swift uses the opposite approach of what Shakespeare does in his sonnets. Shakespeare believes that the fairest of human beings require procreation in order to maintain the beauty in the world and Swift believes just the opposite.
“Walden” written by Henry David Thoreau is a direct contrast of how Jonathan Swift describes both love and beauty. “Walden” depicts the story of Thoreau’s time spend in Walden woods and the importance that he places on nature’s role as it relates to beauty. “Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it”. (Thoreau, 1854/2008, p. 2177). Thoreau truly believed that nature was exquisite and that there was nothing at all that was negative or degrading about it. Henry David Thoreau speaks eloquently and of beautiful things whereas Swift depicts and darker and danker side of things.
In Henry David Thoreau’s story of “Walden” emotions play