Bleeding Love: Using Heartbreak and Romance to enforce Patriarchy

It is an obvious trend that the narratives we have been reading have been getting increasingly romantic in nature. Our semester began by looking at texts that dealt with the very unromantic subjects such as witchcraft and infanticide- so any change toward positive sentiment seems a huge leap! However, though these magazine texts often utilize beautiful language and heartfelt emotion, they also have some gloomy subject matter. The women in these narratives love deeply, but in turn they are deeply wounded by their love. The objects of their affection often are duplicitous libertines who trick their victims into surrendering virtue and into a downward spiral of depression. Therefore the love in these stories is largely a negative force. Love has everything to do with the plotline, but very little to do with the outcome and the impact of these tales. I believe that these narratives became increasingly prominent at the end of the 1700s due to the marketability of romance and the patriarchal lessons established by these cautionary tales. The practical applications of these tales as warning devices impresses on the reader that this was still a society where love had little to do with life.

Like the Leona Lewis song, the women in the seduction tales are often bleeding love- meaning they love so deeply that the betrayal of their sentiments often kills them. They try to harshly reprimand their unworthy lovers, but the results of their fallen virtue are still largely with them. The men seem to run off free to continue with their deceptions without paying a price. This plotline runs throughout the seduction narrative, and the drama of the material and the flowery language made great reading the 1700s. These magazine pieces were often mini dramas for their authors and audience, and took on the language and actions of a stage play. Talk about melodramatic. However, the exhuberance of feeling seemed to be in balance with the emphasis on sensibility of the age. While previous times had labels like “the age of reason” this seemed to be an era of emotion. By writing to cater to this emotional audience, the author was guaranteeing their work would be printed and read. So in this case, love is an exploitable, trendy emotion that can lead to profits.

However, there was a latent function of these narratives, and this was to subvert romantic ideas in women by showing the adverse effects that could come from this type of extreme romance. Since the era was obsessed with sensibility, people were beginning to get silly notions: like love should be a factor in marriage. But the society was still male dominated and structured in such a way that many thought it necessary to still arrange marriages based on wealth and class status. These views were often held by older generations and those who wanted marriage to still be a largely arrangable institution. Most people in this age were still expected to marry and hope that, in time, love would blossom out of the union. For people whose fortunes depended on the connections their daughters’ marriages would make, the idea of marrying for love was dangerous. It could ruin a family’s prospects. So these magazine texts always ended dismally, with the woman heartbroken and dying, as to show that love did not lead to happiness. They were entertaining reads with an alarming message that love was not an emotion to be trusted.