Although many of the texts we read in class this week point to the scoundrel rake, I also felt like I was reading someone’s love letter. This type of print might have been the result of a gravitational pull away from patriarchal structure of arranged marriages, but it also reflects romantic love in a way that reaches the heart of the reader. No longer drowning in facts and figures, we get to hear their thoughts. The loss of chastity disguises the fact that someone’s heart has been broken. One such text is the “Story of Amelia”. In the title on the article, it is included that this article was extracted from one of her letters to a Friend.
The fact that this young woman wrote this letter as a warning to “such of my sex” could support that an arranged marriage would act as a safety net. Although she says she “had virtuous examples before me daily:” she still fell victim to “an enemy within my own bosom”. It would be easy to point to the arranged marriage as the savior of this young woman’s fate. But, then again it seems that her parents surrounded her with everything that would have equipped her to be successful at this stage in her life, but she fell victim to love. So, what does love have to do with it? Everything!
It seems to me that the male seducer in this letter knew exactly how to extract love from the heart of his unsuspecting victim. “His artful insinuations, like the arrow that flies in darkness, wounded my reason, ere I was conscious of their approach, and rendered me inattentive to the measures of my guilt.” The parents of this young girl were evidently absent or were also fooled by him. An arranged marriage would not have prevented this thief from stealing the heart of their daughter. Keeping her locked in a castle might have been more successful, but not very practical.
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2 comments:
I agree with what you said about the "love letter" format of some of the texts we've read; they certainly add an element of interest to the tale, which encourages more to read them.
Also, good point about the rejection of parental authority in the narratives. You're right: many of the women in the stories go against the wishes of their parents in one way or another... why would an arranged marriage stop them, since their parents set the marriages up in the first place? It's unlikely that they would choose to disregard parental authority in one case but not in another.
I liked what you had to say in your post. It is interesting to think about the way the man fooled the woman and her parents because I wonder how many times this happens in real life? That is just something that always crosses my mind when reading these texts. I always try and picture myself as being one of these women. I would not be able to handle it, especially an arranged marriage.
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