Adultery In Joyce Carol Oates's 'The Lady With The Pet Dog'

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Emily Dillon Adultery Draft In most cases the act of committing adultery is most often viewed as immoral and highly unethical but others may see this act of cheating as justifiable in certain situations. Adultery is being unfaithful and dishonest in a marriage, but people continuously do it. There is typically a compelling reason as to why a person would cheat on their spouse depending on their situation. These reasons do not always justify adultery or breaking the law, but in some cases the consequences of cheating can be seen to be positive giving it a sense of justification. The reasoning behind infidelity can give a person the idea that adultery can be justified. People may commit adultery for different reasons; they could be due…show more content…
Anna was drowning in the misery of her marriage and in guilt from seeing another man on one side but is happy to be with Gurov. Anna states that, “for years now they had not been comfortable together, in their intimacy and at a distance… It was something they might have known once” (Oates 449), which explains that her unhappy marriage forced her to search for a person to fulfill the lost emotions at home. Committing adultery is more of an emotional fulfillment that it is a physical need but it derives from the want to find someone who means something more. If couple who married shows that they do not love each other mutually, it should be acceptable for the two to be involved in an affair because neither of them truly gets hurt, providing act of cheating to be meaningless and…show more content…
The exceptions to the moral wrongness of cheating are based on the circumstances surrounding the individual and not on the particular consequences. Dmitry and Anna are both married to different people that they are not in love with or no longer in love with leaving them both in a marriage with no intimacy. When the person you are cheating with is also in a situation where they are miserable in their current relationship it develops a strong reason for adultery to be justified. At the beginning of the story it may have seemed Anna was engaging in an illicit relationship with Gurov for no real reason, until the end of the story when she realizes herself that Gurov “was her husband truly–they were truly married, here in this room–they had been married haphazardly and accidentally for a long time”(Oates 460). The circumstances that surrounded Anna’s adultery lead her to the conclusion that her husband made her unhappy and she did not love him but there was no way she could be with the one she loved,
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