"Love in Excess"

Analytical Essay # 54961

English > Analysis
Literature > English

"Love in Excess"

An analysis of the gender-neutral language of love in Eliza Haywood's "Love in Excess".

5,209 words () | 6 sources | MLA | 2004 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Eliza Haywood's novel, "Love in Excess", suggests that passionate emotion is a universal sentiment. It looks at how the characters' thoughts posit that there is a universal language of love that dissolves the prominence of gender and how, at the same time, the novel works to enforce codes of amorous action that are inherently linked to gender, perhaps to suggest that these codes serve some purpose. It explores how the novel does not censure internal expressions of true passion, although it does at times suggest that sexual codes of conduct are necessary. Characters who overstep the boundaries of conduct too flagrantly generally censure themselves through self-destruction. The characters that self-destruct do so specifically because they take actions that transgress gender boundaries.

From the Paper:

"According to the narrator, love is its own agent; it is a force that acts independent and without regard for the people whom it affects. Because humanity has no control over love, it cannot be held responsible for the feelings it evokes. This force is so far beyond the cognitive capabilities of man that is "ceases to be worthy" of a simple definition or "that name" that society has given it. The idea that man becomes "really possest with it", posits love as a supernatural force. One usurped by this force can no longer be held accountable because he cannot be "master of his actions". The human being is little more than a victim, much as one might be victim to a "misfortune" such as "poverty, sickness or deformity". Essentially, love is a disease that anyone of "human nature" is susceptible to."