Romantic Love, Gender Imbalance and Feminist Readings in Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea

Even though Iris Murdoch’s novels depict a profoundly patriarchal society, most scholars have generally failed to identify any feminist aspirations in her work. This article aims to reassess her legacy as a writer by analysing from a feminist perspective one of her most acclaimed novels, The Sea, The Sea (1978). The tension between the androcentric approach of a self-deluded male narrator and a female author whose worldview is strongly influenced by her gender results in a feminist critique which is not based on the recovery of a female voice, but on the exploration of patriarchy within the novel and the production of a feminist epistemology derived from a dialogue between Murdoch’s fiction and philosophy.

Dear John

Are 'Dear John' letters lethal weapons in the hands of men at war? Many US officers, servicemen, veterans, and civilians would say yes. Drawing on personal letters, oral histories, and psychiatric reports, as well as popular music and movies, Susan L. Carruthers shows how the armed forces and civilian society have attempted to weaponize romantic love in pursuit of martial ends, from World War II to today. Yet efforts to discipline feeling have frequently failed. And women have often borne the blame. This sweeping history of emotional life in wartime explores the interplay between letter-writing and storytelling, breakups and breakdowns, and between imploded intimacy and boosted camaraderie. Incorporating vivid personal experiences in lively and engaging prose – variously tragic, comic, and everything in between – this compelling study will change the way we think about wartime relationships.

Impact of Persian Sufi Thoughts on D. H. Lawrence’s Writing

In this paper, we have argued that Lawrence’s interest in what is ancient wisdom brings him in direct or indirect contact with Sufi metaphysics. This outlook on the world brings him closer to a Sufi universe in two ways. Firstly, Lawrence portrays romantic relationships in a mystical language, he presents the sensuous relationships as sacred activities through which the characters aspire to self-discovery. Lawrence`s portrayal of romantic love corresponds with the higher concept of love in Sufi literature. Secondly, this paper takes a closer look at some of Lawrence’s spiritual works including his Study of Thomas Hardy to compare his sustained argument regarding spiritualism and transcendental motifs in comparison with Sufi cosmology. Moreover, the following discussion also includes a detailed engagement with Lawrence`s correspondence and biographical information of the time when Lawrence was writing his essays and novels which contain transcendental motifs. His correspondence and biographical information suggest he had some direct exposure to Sufi literature in translation. Keywords: mysticism, divinity, holistic vision, physical and spiritual connection, cosmology, transcendental, metaphysics, ontology

Discourse of First Romantic Love: Gender Scenarios

The sexual, gender and family revolutions of the 20th century led to a massive transformation of the institutions of marriage, family and romantic relationships, and with them to the changes in the concept of romantic love, which continue to this day. In modern society, various and even contradictory cultural models and discourses appear, between which individuals are forced to maneuver, using scenarios that are recommendations, schemes of socially expected actions. An important role in the assimilation, application and further formation of attitudes and practices of romantic love is played by the first encounter with it, which is the starting point in feeling for the boundaries of acceptable behavior and the feelings accompanying it. But what experience do individuals themselves refer to first romantic love, how is it evaluated, and what meaning does it have for them? Does this built experience of first romantic love differ between men and women? This study explores these issues by referring to the informants' discursive experience and reconstructing, based on it, the fulfilled gender scenarios of first romantic love, based on a larger cultural model. Based on 30 narrative interviews, 12 scenarios of first romantic love were found, 7 of which are gender specific. There are no fundamental differences in the understanding of first romantic love between men and women, however, its assessment is more emotionally expressed in women, their scenarios are more positively worked out, while men have more negative and ambivalent experiences in the scenarios. The study also confirms that the cultural pattern of romantic love is indeed blurred and contradictory.

A Mixed-Method Approach to Understand Themes of Love in Victims’ Dismissals of Civil Protection Orders

Domestic violence protective orders are the most widely used intimate partner violence-related legal intervention in the United States, yet many victims later ask to have these orders dismissed. This article uses a mixed-methods approach to examine the conditions that help explain why victims of intimate partner violence dismiss their protection orders. Quantitative findings from 841 civil protection order cases show that victims who need protection the most are the most likely to seek dismissals. Victims who experienced recent or physical abuse were significantly more likely to dismiss their protection orders. Qualitative findings from 200 dismissal requests reveal that victims reference common themes of loving the abuser, that the abuser is a good parent, that the abuser is seeking treatment, or that they desire to save the relationship. Victims draw from broad romantic rationalizations when describing their decision to drop a protection order from the court. Building upon insights from constructs of romantic love, this study highlights how the rationalizations victims invoke in their dismissal requests are also associated with their experiences of abuse. A mixed methodological approach reveals a significant contrast between the language in victims’ petitions and their dismissal requests. Victims voiced fear and violence in their petitions for protection orders, then employed meanings of romantic love, reconciliation, and change when requesting that these temporary protection orders be dropped. This contrast reflects the cyclical nature of abuse and suggests that greater attention must be paid to ensuring court officials have a strong understanding of the complexities of victim attrition.

THE MAGIC OF THE QUEEN OF EGYPT IN THE ROSE "CLEOPATRA"

Presented a new approach to the training future teachers, including Science (biology, botany, etc.) through the prism of the rose named after the last pharaoh of Egypt, Queen Cleopatra. The authors consider the Cleopatra rose not through the preparation of a plant in the laboratory (while scientific botanists search to know flowers physiologically and morphologically in the spirit of progress and truth,), but reveal the secrets and magic of the Cleopatra rose through the knowledge of "life truths", thus forming professionally oriented foreign language educational space at university (foreign language, history, geography, philosophy, chemistry, art (A.S. Arensky's ballet "Egyptian Nights", operas "Cléopâtre" by Massenet and "Giulio Cesare in Egitto" by Haendel), cinema, literature, psychology), involving students in romantic love, the ability to understand the flower codes inherent in the Cleopatra rose. We use floral codes strategically in their fiction as subtexts for practitioners of the language of flowers. Key words: Queen Cleopatra, rose Cleopatra,

Rethinking Love as Passion: Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate

Jeanette Winterson’s magical realist love stories, such as The Passion, have been read by some critics in terms of a tendency to idealise romance as a transformative passion that transcends social structures. In this article, I propose that Winterson’s recent gothic novel, The Daylight Gate, critically revises a set of Romantic themes first broached in The Passion, exposing and interrogating the fantasy scenario at the centre of romantic love. This narrative about magic and the devil explores the ambivalence of passion as possession—diabolical and contractual—before using this to critique the desire for transcendence implied by “undying love”. Metaphysics becomes a metaphor for metapsychology, where the Romantic motif of undying love as connected to fatal desire is complicated by a traversal of the fantasy of the union of two immortal souls. These revisions have the effect of reversing the implications of Winterson’s earlier treatment of romantic love, turning it back from the personal towards engagement with the political.