Does Following the Rules Result in Successful Relationships?

 

I remember learning relationship rules growing up from listening to love songs and watching multiple movies, in which a specific process was followed to successfully win over the man or woman one desired.

As I became obsessed with the movie John Tucker Must Die, in which I watched an innocent teen named Kate entice John with the help from John’s three exes, I realized to develop and maintain a successful relationship, I needed to adhere to the rules necessary to win over my man. These girls set out to trick John (as Rosalind tricked Orlando), in order to win him over. Kate got confused along the way because she believed she was supposed to be playing hard to get. The other girls scolded her because they claimed she was past the “playing hard to get phase” the moment she had John smitten.

I have noticed these relationship rules are not only existent in modern media but have been present since the works of Shakespeare. Each individual must follow the patterns in order to achieve love or display and prove the love they already feel.

In As You Like It, Rosalind challenges Orlando’s feelings of love by questioning characteristics as ones associated with love. Rosalind claims Orlando could not officially be in love because he does not portray the symptoms of an individual in love:

“A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and /sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which/ you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not—but I pardon you for that—but I pardon you for that, for simply you having in beard is a/ younger brother’s revenge. Then you hose should be ungar-/tered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your/ shoe untied, and everything about your demonstrating a careless/ desolation. But you are no such man. You are rather point-/ device in your accountrements, as loving yourself than seeming/ the lover of any other” (3.2.337-346).

Orlando does not meet these standards, and so he has a hard time convincing Rosalind it was him who posted his love poems on the tree. Rosalind believes she can cure Orlando from this love sickness and explains that she has expertise in curing other men by a specific process, “would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him,/ then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him,” (3.2.372).

Rosalind shows there is a procedure to undo a person in love just as individuals follow guidelines to win over their love interest. By adhering to the relationship rules, such as playing hard to get and then maintaining and continuing to follow the rules to keep them fascinated, individuals are likely to succeed in having a long-lasting relationship.

 

 

 

The Cinderella Twist

All’s Well That Ends Well  reminded me so much of Ella Enchanted because the focus was on Helena, the orphan daughter who falls madly in love with Count Bertram but feels like she has no chance because he is a nobleman while she is part of the lower class. As well as the rejection Count Bertram gives her because she has no higher statues. 

The same issue can be seen when viewing the movie Ella Enchanted because the plot starts off showing how Ella’s mother passes away and is cared for by her thoughtless and greedy father who remarries but eventually passes away as well and she ends up getting mistreated by her step mother and step sisters who make her clean and do chores all day. 

            In Ella Enchanted, Ella relates to Helena in the sense that she starts growing feelings towards prince Charmont who all the girls think of as dreamy but they know he is out of their reach. The scene of the movie that most relates to the play is the scene where Ella and prince Charmont are standing in in the mirror garden and she loves him so much that she is trying to find the will power not to stab him, but when she finally succeeds he ends up rejecting her and she is taken away. After being taken away she does everything in her power to see him again and try to talk to him in order to explain her actions. When finally doing so they work things out and end up together and happily married.

            The movie is different in many ways but I felt like it was a modern-day, fantasy Cinderella story which included lots of twists and turns but overall covered the basics of what Shakespeare’s play All’s Well That Ends Well tried to cover. We even got to see how Count Bertram who was a player related so much to prince Charmont in the movie of Ella Enchanted.. Both the play and the film focused on love, betrayal, and rejection.

Liminal Lovers

            Richard Rambuss’ piece “What It Feels Like for a Boy: Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis” explores the “liminal, beardless boy” that is Adonis. However, both Venus and Adonis in the poem both exhibit and experience certain liminal qualities, those that rest in a state of disorientation, ambiguity, or transition.  

            The poem begins with describing Adonis as “[r]ose-cheeked” (line 3) and Venus “like a bold-faced suitor [that] ’gins to woo him” (line 6). Not only does this indicate a sort of gender role reversal, but this also puts both Adonis and Venus in liminal positions regarding their identities, based on the narrator’s phrasing in the beginning of the poem. This disorients the two characters from their patriarchal-assigned gender roles, as it associates Adonis with an air of more physical beauty and Venus as a man attempting to gain Adonis’ favor. This is also evident when she references him as a “[s]tain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man” (line 9); then, later, the narrator of the poem compares Adonis’ blushing to that of a “maiden burning of…cheeks” (line 50). Venus seeks to disorient Adonis so he may question his identity, bringing him almost to a place of nonexistence, or a liminal space, in which he does not fit into being altogether masculine or feminine. She does this, however, by attempting to feminize him despite his identity as a cis male (or what is assumed from the poem). In this she hopes to bring him closer to her by making him liminal like her.

One depiction of Adonis being pursued by Venus.

            Venus is also liminal, seen as the masculine pursuer instead of the feminine figure being pursued. Not only is she referred to as having an “engine of her thoughts” (line 367), but Adonis’ hand caught in hers is like a “lily prisoned in a jail of snow” (line 362). These lines paint Venus as having male characteristics, of working like an engine and a snow bank that cannot be lifted. Despite depicting her more masculine, it feels more as though Venus is stuck in a liminal state of god and human rather than being hypermasculinized. As a god she is used to harnessing and applying the power she has to what- or whoever she wants, as “[h]er lips are conquerors, his lips obey” (line 549). Gods themselves, even the female, are masculine to the extent that they do whatever they please: “She wildly breaketh from their strict (restricting) embrace” (line 874). In this sense is Venus masculinized through her god status, and, more often than not, feels more commonly accepted. Furthermore, it feels as though Venus wishes to enter a transitioning state, as “[s]he’s love; she loves; and yet she is not loved” (line 610). As a goddess humans cannot fully satisfy her for eternity because she is immortal and her human lovers are not. Despite this, she pursues love, but Adonis “hate[s] not love, but [Venus’] device (tactics) in love” (line 789). Venus, being a goddess, would not be versed in the human tactics of love, which would include the girl shunted into the patriarchal system, never to speak and always to consent, the exact opposite of the pursuing and forceful Venus.

            “Venus and Adonis” addresses some complex situations of liminality in regards to what it means to be male or female and what it means to be human and love. Is Adonis truly androgynous, or is that how he is painted out to be? Even after Adonis’ death, would Venus ever be able to achieve human love, or is she forever stuck in a liminal space?