Guilt, Duty, and Unrequited Love: Deconstructing the Love Triangles in James Joyce’s The Dead and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure
"It’s no problem of mine but it’s a problem I fight, living a life that I can’t leave behind. But there’s no sense in telling me, the wisdom of the cruel words that you speak. But that’s the way that it goes and nobody knows, while everyday my confusion grows."
--New Order, Bizarre Love Triangle, from Substance, 1987
Most people who have watched a soap opera can recognize that the love triangle is a crucial element to the plot. In fact, the original radio broadcasted soap operas seemed to consist almost entirely of love triangles. The love triangle, for plot purposes, seems to be a popular technique employed to change the dynamic, add dimension, and generally ‘spice up’ an otherwise stagnant monogamous relationship. It would make for a pretty dull and quite unpopular show if such popular daytime soap characters as Luke and Laura or Bo and Hope had enjoyed a smooth courtship, uncomplicated marriage and then grew old and gray together without a single conflict. The viewers watched them go through many conflicts, some of which involved the classic love triangle. Such conflicts as the love triangle keep the story moving. Common elements of triangles in today’s soaps consist of lust, greed, jealousy, any of which are interchangeable with the conflicts resulting from situations involving lovers coming back from the dead or paternity uncertainties. Yet love triangles, whether in the soap opera or in the novel, are not all uniformly constructed. James Joyce’s The Dead and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, both modernist novels, each contain love triangles as an integral element of the story.
The key triangles I will focus on are comprised of Michael, Greta and Gabriel, and, Philotson, Sue, and Jude. Although not absolutely identical, deconstruction reveals guilt, duty, and unrequited love as essential components to the construction of both.
	Besides the most obvious similarity that both triangles are composed of one woman and two men, guilt also figures prominently. Although the men of the triangles may have their own guilt-related issues, it seems as though it is the guilt felt by the women that presents the most conflict. In The Dead, Greta has to live with the knowledge that it is because of her, alth...
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...ith the tide throughout the novel.
	Love, with its power to create agony or ecstasy, is a dependable source of drama, whether it be for the novel or the soap opera. As we see in Jude the Obscure and The Dead, the tension of the love relationship is increased with the addition of a third party. Jude and Sue’s relationship may likely have been quite simpler without the presence of Philotson. He would not have been an option for Sue’s need to rectify the death of the children. In fact, she may have seen marriage to Jude as the right thing to do. They may have actually gotten married and been very happy. But for some reason, Hardy did not allow this to happen. Instead, he preferred to leave the reader with the dark view of love, where there is not always a happy ending. As for Gabriel and Greta’s relationship, if Greta had not told of Michael, Gabriel’s evening may have ended much differently. He would most likely have satisfied his lust, yet the novel would lack the epiphany Greta’s confession causes him to have. The components of guilt, duty, and unrequited love, though not universal traits, do well to maintain the complexity and efficacy of these particular love triangles.
“Dubliners” by James Joyce was first published in 1914. It is a collection of short stories, which takes place in the same general area and time frame, moving from one individual’s story to the next. Boysen in “The Necropolis of Love: James Joyce’s Dubliners” discuses the way the citizens of Dublin are caught in this never ending misery because of the lack of love- mainly instituted by the “criminalization of sensual love” from the church- and the economic stress, and struggle to survive. Zack Brown goes through the individual short stories, pointing out their references to paralysis, as well as a few other themes in “Joyce’s Prophylactic Paralysis: Exposure in “Dubliners.”” “James Joyce’s usage of Diction in Representation of Irish Society in Dubliners” by Daronkolaee discuses the background knowledge of the culture and particular details of the city that enhance the understanding of the reader and enforce the ideas presented by Boysen and broken down by Brown. These analytical articles help support the idea that Joyce uses
In addition to appearance, the two women have extremely different relationships with Ethan. In order to portray each woman’s relationship with Ethan, the author uses the motif of silence.
...pared because of the infidelity and betrayal to their loved ones, and contrasted because of the different emotions that each of the main characters from feeling regretful and very indifferent.
Finally, even though, for a long time, the roles of woman in a relationship have been established to be what I already explained, we see that these two protagonists broke that conception and established new ways of behaving in them. One did it by having an affair with another man and expressing freely her sexuality and the other by breaking free from the prison her marriage represented and discovering her true self. The idea that unites the both is that, in their own way, they defied many beliefs and started a new way of thinking and a new perception of life, love and relationships.
Gaitskill’s “Tiny, Smiling Daddy” focuses on the father and his downward spiral of feeling further disconnected with his family, especially his lesbian daughter, whose article on father-daughter relationships stands as the catalyst for the father’s realization that he’d wronged his daughter and destroyed their relationship. Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” focuses on Mel and his attempt to define, compare, and contrast romantic love, while leaving him drunk and confused as he was before. While both of my stories explore how afflicted love traumatizes the psyche and seem to agree that love poses the greatest dilemma in life, and at the same time that it’s the most valued prospect of life, the two stories differ in that frustrated familial love causes Gaitskill's protagonist to become understandable and consequently evokes sympathy from the reader, but on the other hand frustrated romantic love does nothing for Carver's Protagonist, except keep him disconnected from his wife and leaving him unchanged, remaining static as a character and overall unlikable. In comparing “Tiny, Smiling Daddy” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, together they suggest that familial love is more important than romantic love, which we relentlessly strive to achieve often forgetting that we’ll forever feel alone without familial love, arguably the origin of love itself.
In Dante’s Inferno, Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the protagonists’ relationships with their companions becomes an essential subplot within each text. Their relationships are crucial in order to complete their journey and in some cases complete each other. In addition, there are many characteristics in each text that are unrealistic representations of life. For instance, the environment of hell the Inferno, Don Quixote’s fictional world, and the instant marriages in Pride and Prejudice are all things that are not typically seen in real life. These unrealistic characteristics affect how each relationship develops, however, these factors do not take away from the significance of each relationship. In each text, the lucrative ambitions of the characters are initially the motive of many relationships rather than the desire for true companionship. A major part of the relationships development is how the characters’ companionships transition from ones that are based on individual ambitions to ones that are built on the desire for intimate relationships.
James Joyce is the author of Dubliners, a compilation of Irish short stories that reflect on the feelings he associates with the city of Dublin, where he grew up in a large impoverished family. After he graduated from the University College, Dublin, Joyce went to live abroad in Paris, France. This action indicates a sense of entrapment that led to his desire to escape. The situations in his stories differ significantly, but each character within these stories experiences this sense of escape that Joyce had. In “An Encounter”, two boys make their first real move at being independent by skipping school to explore Dublin. In “Eveline”, the main character has a choice between taking care of her unstable father or leaving him to lead a new life with a man she has been seeing. In Joyce’s story, “The Dead,” a young man is thrown into deep human assessment, becomes unsure of who he is, and soon after is frightened of this newly discovered truth. The stories in Dubliners implicate this need for independence through characters in different situations and experiencing the feeling of entrapment.
Time and again, history has created a star-crossed couple that overcomes all obstacles through the strength of love. Whether it is from Pyramus and Thisbe, Romeo and Juliet, or Jack and Rose, the only possibility to separate the couple is the death of one or both individuals. Love is defined in these relationships as fighting against all odds, class, society, and even family, in order to be with their loved one. While these stories may be fictional, history has presented a real case of star-crossed “lovers”, Peter Abelard and Heloise. This couple went to little length to fight society in trying to establish a relationship with one another. Although considered a love story to some, a relationship founded on lust, inability to fight for marriage, and union to the church, shatters the illusion of romance and shows the relationship for what it truly is, a lackluster liaison.
The Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) that has spread over recent years is destroying police-black citizen relations. They are constantly spreading hateful propaganda and creating danger for the number-one protector of black lives, police officers. BLM is damaging race relations in addition to putting police in danger. The organization is reversing years of wounds that throw us back into race-relations from decades ago. Another way the relationship of black men and police officers is being harmed is by the lack of respect that is being given to officers. Subsequently, police have backed down on their proactive methods and therefore weakened our justice system, and the effects of a weak justice system could be deadly. Americans have to change
The homosocial relationship between the main character and their best friend connects these two novels by showing how the main character has the same purpose of taking revenge against the one who killed their loved ones, and the best friend who is always there to help and take care of the main character so he can complete his goal. The differences between them make the relationship closer and stronger, and it is proven by the authors through out the novels that no other person can take the place of their best friend.
But despite the challenges a woman can face when it comes to getting into fitness, there are lots of ways that you can do whether you are a working momma, a single lady, a granny,
“The Storm” by Kate Chopin states that societies should not keep two people who have the potential for consummate love apart even though they may be divided by class because doing so would leave the two people unhappy and unfulfilled. In “The Storm,” the characters Calixta and Bobinot do not seem to be happy and fulfilled in the marriage. This inference can see this if we try to see how they fit in the Love Triangle created by Robert Sternberg which measures if two people have consummate love for each other. Before describing how Calixta and Bobinot do not appear to be happy and fulfilled, it is necessary to explain the Love Triangle. It is necessary to remember the theme of “The Storm” is that people who have consummate love for each other should not be kept apart or else they will be unhappy and unfulfilled.
In “The Dead,” James Joyce presents the Irish as a people so overwhelmed with times past and people gone that they cannot count themselves among the living. Rather, their preoccupation with the past and lack of faith in the present ensures that they are more dead than they are alive. The story, which takes place at a holiday party, explores the paralyzed condition of the lifeless revelers in relation to the political and cultural stagnation of Ireland. Gabriel Conroy, the story’s main character, differs from his countrymen in that he recognizes the hold that the past has on Irish nationalists and tries to free himself from this living death by shedding his Gaelic roots and embracing Anglican thinking. However, he is not able to escape, and thus Joyce creates a juxtaposition between old and new, dead and alive, and Irish and Anglican within Gabriel. His struggle, as well as the broader struggle within Irish society of accommodating inevitable English influence with traditional Gaelic customs is perpetuated by symbols of snow and shadow, Gabriel’s relationship with his wife, and the epiphany that allows him to rise above it all in a profound and poignant dissertation on Ireland in the time of England.
In their short stories “The Dead” by James Joyce and “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, the author sought to express the disgruntled emotions felt by young men and women of their era. Both authors use commentary and powerful language to justify the emotions felt during this time. They express their displeasure with society, in the case of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and the strife of expectations of a man in Joyce’s “The Dead”. The author’s use of tone in both stories reflects the feelings each felt and themes each attack display the emotional state of society of their time.
Despite the authors writing the stories decades apart, there are striking similarities between the protagonists. Defying the societal standard of the time, they rebelled against their marriages and strove for any feeling