Romantic Love

Read and discuss the text. Explain the underlined parts of the text using the English-English dictionary.

The family is supposed to be founded on the romantic love of the marital partners. Traces of a more pragmatic attitude persist in the upper classes, where daughters are expected to marry “well” – that is, to a male who is eligible by reason of a family background and earning potential. Most people, however, tend to look askance at anyone who marries for money or some other practical reason in which love plays no part.

Happily enough, romantic love defies a clinical definition. It is a different kind of love, though, from the love you have for your parents or your dog. It involves physical symptoms, such as pounding heart and sexual desire, and psychological symptoms, such as obsessive focus on one person and a disregard for any resulting social or economic risks. Our culture encourages us to look for this love – to find that “ one and only”, perhaps even through “love at first sight”. The phenomenon of romantic love occurs when two people meet and find one another personally and physically attractive. They become mutually absorbed, start to behave in what may appear to be a flighty, even irrational manner, decide that they are right for one another, and may then enter a marriage whose success is expected to be guaranteed by their enduring passion. Behavior of this kind is portrayed and warmly endorsed throughout popular culture, by books, magazines, comics, records, popular songs, movies and TV.

Romantic love is a noble idea, and it can certainly help provide a basis for the spouses to “live happily ever after”. But since marriage can equally well be founded on much more practical considerations, why is romantic love of such importance in the modern world? The reason seems to be that it has the following basic functions in maintaining the institution of the nuclear family:

1. Transfer of loyalties. Romantic love helps the young partners to loosen their bonds with their family or orientation, a step that is essential if a new neolocal nuclear family is to be created. Their total absorption in one another facilitates a transfer of commitment from existing family and kin to a new family of procreation, something that would be unlikely to happen under the extended family system.

2. Emotional support. Romantic love provides the couple with emotional support in the difficulties that they face in establishing a new life of their own. This love would not be so necessary in an extended family, where the relatives are able to confront problems cooperatively. In an extended family, in fact, romantic love might even be disfunctional, for it could from their wider obligations to other kin.

3. Incentive to marriage. Romantic love serves as a bait to lure people into marriage. In the extended family system of traditional societies, it is automatically assumed that people will marry, but in the modern world, people have considerable choice over whether they will get married or not. A contract to form a lifelong commitment to another person is not necessarily a very tempting proposition, however: to some, the prospect may look more like a noose than like a bed of roses. Without feelings of romantic love, many people might have no incentive to marry.

To most of us, particularly to those who are in love, romantic love seems to be the most natural thing in the world, but sociological analysis shows that it is a purely cultural product, arising in certain societies for specific reasons. In a different time or in a different society, you might never fall in love, nor would you expect to.

2) Translate paragraph “Transfer of loyalties” in writing.

3) Answer the questions: What is a pragmatic attitude to marriage of the upper classes? What is romantic love according to the author of the article? In what way is romantic love different from any other kind of love? How does romantic love effect the behavior of those in love? Why is romantic love of such importance in the modern world? How has the attitude to the necessity of marriage changed in the modern world as compared to traditional societies? What does sociological analysis of romantic love show?

4) Make sure you know the vocabulary of the following text: cure, flu, smallpox, a broken ankle, mumps, persuade in, germ, humiliate, to be enchanted, coo with delight, disarmingly innocent, overwhelming, ailment, affectation, illiterate, rousing march, a pastorale, the siege, quarantine.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29