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=TEXTS IN TIME= throughout time, texts have potrayed the establisehed values and contexts of that which thier composers live in. Elizabeth Barret Browning, through her poems "Sonnets fron the Potruguese", examines love which is idealised and spiritual but is based on real life experiences.Woed by a man four years her junior, herself a reclusive invalid, the poems were her intensely personal and private reflections about love. The Great Gatsby(1924), written by F Scott Fitzgerald, is also about a perception of the life which is corrupted heavily by the American dream. On one level, the novel too is a love story, a tale of Gatsby's obsessive and ultimately destructive desire for a woman he has lost to the past. Fitzgerald also portrays the shallowness, hypocrisy and greed of the "Jazz Age" and the lost generation of America after World War 1 which reflects on the American Dream.

Brownings potrayal of love takes many different forms in her poems. Authentic love however, is a love which Browning discusses as a base of shared intimacy, acceptance and trust. The sonnets can be understood through her personal circumstances of the Victorian era in the 1840s. Being brought up by a restrictive father who did not allow marriage, the need for a authentic "fairytaled' love is a means of escaping her life. Because the attitudes to women during this time did not aloow personal expression and required sexuality to be repressed, it was only natural that Browning sought to poetry as a way of expressing her deepest feelings about her suitor Robert, who was six years her junior. her poems celebrated authentic love which was idealised in the VIctorian era, although marriage in those days was seen as a financial agreement as the property of the woman became the mans after the marriage was complete. Brownings poetry was not always wirtten to praise the social norms of society but also challanged Victorian values towards women, courtship and love relationships.

Relationhips have needed a base of Authentic love which allows the relationhip to grow into a strong emotional bond. Browning shows the need for this in sonnet XIV. In this sonnet Browning tells her lover that love cannot be based on the superficial or the changable but love her for "loves sake" so she can be sure that the relationship will last. Browning ironicall refers to courting convetions common in victorian time by putting the words in man's mouth: " do not love say/ i love her for her smile... for a trick of thought/ that falls in well with mine." these reasons for love seem to superficial and, because of the strong possiblity of change, are the demise in a relationship. browning stresses this and thus pleads for a base of love authentic love as it is critical for a lasting relationship.

F. Sott Fitzgerald shows how true authentic love jad no place in the context of the American "Jazz Age" through his novel "The Great Gatsby". The social norms of America after WWII were very diffrent to the practices of Brownings's Victorian era which is evident in the novel. The 1920s was a time of great prosperity and the age of prohibition; when alchohol was outlawed in America and its illegal sale made fortunes fpr people known as "bootleggers" such as Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald namd this lifestyle the "Jazz Age" as religion was weakend and people became indifferent to traditional American views and morals. Fitzgeralds personal context was also a very important influence in "THe Great Gatsby". His desprate bid to uphold a celebrity lifestile status in New York with his wife Zelda by his side was a lost hope from the beginning as he began to be in financial and relationship trouble. Fitzgerald therefore shows parallels with Gatsby and thus, "The Great Gatsby" was shaped by social and personal contexts which effectively challange the authentic love mentioned in Brownings sonnets.

The type of love expressed in "The Great Gatsby' is in stark contrast to the authentic love showed in Brownings peotry. The marriage between Tom and Daisy Buchanan symbolises the impossibility of autheentic love when gree, selfishness and infidelity predominate."Enourmously wealthy" TOm represents "old" money with privilege and inbred superiority. His brutal and self-serving attitude to love is shown in his treatment to Myrtle- breaking her nose whe she dared claim the same status as Daisy, and by his careless infidelity:"I go off on a spree... but i always come back". Daisy revealed to be an unworthy object of Gatsby's devotion, as she sacrifices real love for luxuries and status of wealth bestowed by Toms "old" money, not that of the "bootlegger" "Mr Nobody from Nowhere". as TOm scornfully calls Gatsby. Daisy cries when Gatsby "began throwing" his luxurious shirts saying "It makes me sad beacause ove never seen such bueatiful shirts before", but she weeps not for thier lost love put the display of wealth. Fitsgerald makes a bitter irony as Tom and Daisy are the only relationship that survives in the novel. Through nick, Fitzgerald makes a scathing coment on thier superficial love: "THey were careless people... they smashed up things they created and then retreated back into thier money.. and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

In conclusion, ELizabeth Barret Browning, through her peoms "Sonnets of the Portugues" shows examples of an idealised authentic love which is based on strong real life experiences. F.Scott Fitzgerald however, expresses an idealised love that is corrupted heavily by the American Dream. Both these texts show how established values and contexts of times are portrayed by composeres who live in them. =﻿BELONGING STORY=