On essay writting and love

As an English major I write a lot of essays. I've never been one that likes to go too deep into a subject, I like just brushing it enough to get the reader thinking, but as I have gone farther and farther in my career as a student I have had to write increasingly complex essays. Today I'm working on one about Middlemarch by George Eliot, specifically about the choices made by two characters, Dorothea and Rosamond. As I work on it I get more and more into the Psyche of the two characters and the more they annoy me. This makes me realize why I don't like some of the characters of the books I've written. It isn't because they are bad people it is because they make stupid decisions based off of false assumptions. For the same reason I am increasingly disliking Dorothea and Rosamond. Both of them are rather dense at times with what they do. Both married stupidly, not even for love but for something they wanted out of the other person. Dorothea for bettering herself and to gain knowledge previously inaccessible to her. Rosamond marries for status. Both do not get what they anticipated from their marriages because neither of them actually looked at the marriage before them. Status does not equate with money, and acting as Milton's daughters to Milton to Casaubon is not a happy existence.

What does this lack of thinking when marriage for life is on the line mean? It means that even though they messed up with their marriages they have no hope of ever fixing it until their husband dies. Modern day saves people from that, but it looks to me as if just as many people are making bad choices with their marriages and now they don't have to wait for their partner to kick it. Do people just walk blindly into marriage? Why would you do that to yourself? You hurt yourself and the person you are with and if you have kids them too! Yes people can change as your marriage progress that is what is happening to my parents, but they've been married almost 39 years (since Dec 19, 1970). My father is certifiably insane (not kidding he has been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder) but my mother stands by him steadfastly. She loves him still and refuses to leave him, despite my sister and I talking to her about it.

Where did that kind of love go? There doesn't seem to be any relationships these days that will end in the two walking hand in hand gray haired through the park in the fall with the leaves falling around them. Morality has changed over the years. We've lost the loyalty that people used to have for one another. There used to be a thing called honor, it has been deserted for apathy. The Beatles once said "all you need is love" that isn't true you also need loyalty and honor. Now we have lust and apathy.

Maybe I'm thinking like this because I recently broke up with someone I could see myself old and gray and laughing with in 50 or 60 years, we still will be though because we still love each other, we are still loyal to each other in our friendship. Just because we disagreed on children does not keep us from loving and caring for one another. Yet old friends, high school sweethearts leave each other with daggers in their eyes and poison on their lips unable to do that one of the most important thing God ever asks us to do, forgive. Not forget, but forgive.

Well back to my essay now, I've still got to get through what stupid mistakes Rosamond makes in her life. Here's to a life built around intelligent choices not desires.