To Accept Or To Change, Which Is Love?
Throughout history man has always portrayed the dominant role in the
relationship between a man and woman, but what needs to be realized is that they
are two equal members, two members that need to work as a team. A team that is working their way through life, working
together to try and overcome the obstacles that life puts in front of them.
There can be long lasting happiness and love for a team that works
together no matter what “place” in life they finish; this is seen in
Gwendolyn Brooks’ The Bean Eaters. There can be constant struggle within the team if one member
is constantly trying to change the other to be someone that he wants her to be,
not who she is; this is seen in both If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For
Naught by Elizabeth Barret Browning and Let Me Not To The Marriage Of
True Minds by William Shakespeare. People
also have to be ready to join the team. Is someone who is constantly changing teammates really
unhappy with his mate, or is he scared of the final commitment?
This question comes up in To An Autocrat by Diane Wakoski.
You can see many of the aspects of how the relationship works in the play
Othello by William Shakespeare. Within
this play, you see love, desire, deceit, jealousy, revenge, and many other
feelings/emotions that control us in our relationships.
When two people work as a team and accept each other for who they are,
then you will find a love that will last a lifetime.
It is when someone is constantly trying to control the other, change the
other, or waiting for that “perfect” person that you will find conflict and
struggle to keep the relationship alive.
I feel that the best way to have good relationship is to accept the other
and to work as a team. When this is
done, you will be allowed to truly enjoy life and anything that it throws at you
can be easily overcome. It
doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor, but just having someone to share
life with can create happiness. Gwendolyn
Brooks shows us this with her poem The Bean Eaters.
The fact that they are eating beans off of “plain chipware on a plain
and creaking wood, / tin flatware” shows us that they may be of a lower class
in society (Brooks 259 line 3-4). She
writes of the fact that they are “mostly good” and are and older couple
“who have lived their day” (Brooks 259 line 6).
But she also lets us know that they are not unhappy as they look back on
their life “remembering, with twinklings” of all that they have done.
I feel that this poem shows us how even if you have not accumulated all
of the material things that our society feels necessary, as long as you have
someone to love and love you, you have succeeded in life.
This shows the importance of a strong and positive relationship between a
woman and a man.
When someone is constantly trying to change the other it can lead to
controversy and resentment between the two in the relationship. This is why it is so important to accept the one you love for
who they are and what they bring to the relationship. There were two poems that showed what feelings can come about
when someone is trying to control and change the other in a relationship and
they were Elizabeth Barret Browning’s If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For
Naught and William Shakespeare’s Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True
Minds. Both of these poems show
the desire of someone to be loved for who they are inside and the way that they
are right now, not the way that they will be after you mold them into what you
want. William Shakespeare says it
best with “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or
bends with the remover to remove: / O, no; it is an ever-fixed mark” (296 line
2-5). This only shows that if you
want a solid relationship between a man and a woman, you must accept them as who
they are, not change them to be who you want; because this would not be true
love.
To have strong relationship, both people must be secure enough with
themselves to open up and give love. This
to me is even more important than being loved because if you don’t allow
yourself to love back, it doesn’t matter how much love is given to you, you
won’t be happy. In Diane
Wakoski’s To An Autocrat, I see a person that is scared of making that
final commitment of giving your love to someone else.
They fear that permanence of a true lasting relationship and will always
find a fault or gripe, be it ever so tiny, to put in the way of making things
work. By finding little faults such
as washing silky underwear in the sink and hanging them to dry, making telephone
calls, how to brush your teeth, or the mentioning of anything related to the
future and then using them as a reason to end the relationship will only lead to
the end of every relationship that they are involved in (Wakoski 300).
Diane Wakoski ends her poem with a few lines that go both with accepting
who you love and for allowing yourself to love when she writes about the
persona’s dog “She understands / living/ / loving what you have, / making /
the fit” (302 lines 81-85).
In William Shakespeare’s play Othello, he portrays many
different aspects of relationships between both men and women, as well as man to
man. Shakespeare shows us how men
use women as a tool to make things in life work the way that they want them too.
He shows how Iago is able to get Roderigo to do whatever he wants him to.
Roderigo does this because he thinks that it will help him “win”
Desdemona from Othello and is grateful to Iago for “helping” him.
Yet the whole time, Iago is using Roderigo to accomplish his own goals.
This shows us how blind we can be when love is blurring our vision.
He also shows us the relation between men and women for this time period.
I my opinion, women are look at as a prize, a trophy, a tool, or a
possession. I don’t see the
equality or respect that is necessary for a relationship to be strong.
There are many aspects that make a relationship between a woman and a man
work, but the ones that play the strongest role are acceptance and love.
As long as these are present it doesn’t matter who plays the dominant
role or if both people are equal. It
only matters that both people are happy and are able to feel loved for who they
are.
Works Cited
Brooks, Gwendolyn. “The
Bean Eaters.” Bridges:
Literature across cultures. Gilbert
H. Muller, John A. Williams. McGraw-Hill,
Inc., 1994. p 259.
Browning, Elizabeth. “If
Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For Naught.” Bridges: Literature across cultures.
Gilbert H. Muller, John A. Williams.
McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. p
260.
Shakespeare, William. “Let
Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds.” Bridges: Literature across cultures.
Gilbert H. Muller, John A. Williams.
McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. p
296.
Shakespeare, William. “The
Tragedy Of Othello, The Moor Of Venice.” Bridges: Literature across cultures.
Gilbert H. Muller, John A. Williams.
McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. p
352-458.
Wakoski, Diane. “To
An Autocrat.” Bridges:
Literature across cultures. Gilbert
H. Muller, John A. Williams. McGraw-Hill,
Inc., 1994. p 300.
Postscript
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