Elizabeth Barret Browning and the Great Gatsby

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Ideal love carries the seeds of despair Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ written in the mid 1840’s and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ in 1925, both reflect varying components of ideal love carrying the seeds of despair. Ideal love refers to loving for the sake of love and not for what you may get in return, for example; money, status and marriage. It refers to a selfless love. Browning’s sonnets take the reader through her journey of heartache, self-doubt, fragility, devotion, joy, apprehension and mortality. On the other hand ‘The Great Gatsby’ depicts a story from the eyes of a young man named Nick Carraway, narrating a story of love, lust, adultery and murder. Love is a source of conflict within ‘The Great Gatsby’, driving men to fight and ultimately causing three deaths. This novel argues that there is despair embedded in love for all. ‘The Great Gatsby’ is a novel that portrays both the disorder and despair that many during that time experienced due to the chase of ideal love. The concept of idealised love is demonstrated through the relationship of Gatsby and Daisy, or alternately, Gatsby and his idea of Daisy. His ideal love for Daisy is pure and not clouded with any hidden motives. Gatsby builds an image of Daisy and perpetuates this over the five years the two spent apart. Daisy struggles to fulfil this idealistic image set and Gatsby cannot see past the grand fantasy he has created. This is evident in chapter five, “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.” Gatsby believes he is seeking true love, though the journey to this holds inevitable despair leading to death, loneliness and life without love. Ideal love and despair are both evident in Gatsby’s chase for Daisy; he believes Daisy

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