Love Through the Ages - Sexuality and Love

Erotic over pure (Poetry)

"let us sport us while we may; / And now, like am'rous birds of prey... And tear our Pleasures with rough strife"

"warm heart beat... within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; / Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet... hungry for the lips of my desire"

Pure over erotic (Poetry)

"But tell of days in goodness spent, / A mind at peace with all below, / A heart whose love is innocent!"

"warm heart beat... within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; / Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet... hungry for the lips of my desire"

Power over sexuality (Poetry)

"And your quaint Honour turn to dust; / And into ashes all my Lust. / The Graves a fine and private place, / But none I think do there embrace."

"looked at me as she did love, / And made sweet moan. / I set her on my pacing stead... And sure in language strange she said - / 'I love thee true'...I shut her wild wild eyes / With kisses four."

Erotic over pure (Gatsby)

"thickish figure... carried her flesh sensuously... no facet or gleam of beauty... immediately perceptable vitality"

"her life violently extinguished... mingled her thick dark blood with the dust... giving up the remendous vitality she had stored so long."

"I want Myrtle Wilson's breast ripped off - it's exactly the thing, I think" - F. Scott Fitzgerald, c. 1924

Pure over erotic (Gatsby)

"buoyed up as though upon a balloon... rippling and fluttering... short flight around the house"

"like silver idols weighing down their own white dresses"

"bright with the bought luxury of star-shine... youth and mystery that wealth imprisons... gleaming like silver"

Feminist - female characters soley defined and described by men, and linked to value and status.

Power over sexuality (Gatsby)

"I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe... Tom's the first sweetie she ever had."

"Making a short, deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand."

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money."

Marxist - wealth and class allows Daisy and Tom power over oth