William Shakespeare's classic Romeo and Juliet is a story of two star-crossed lovers. Though Romeo and Juliet is a triumph of dramatic lyricism, its tragic ending usurps most other aspects of the play and abandons us to unhappy estimates of whether, and to what degree, its young lovers a...

"Only someone who has suffered the deepest misfortune is capable of experiencing the heights of felicity" (Dumas 1077). The greatest joys, the heights of felicity, do not come out of revenge. Revenge is a natural impulse to injustice where one can be obsessively consumed. It returns lonely, painf...

Joe Rose has planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside to celebrate his lover's return after six weeks in the States. To complete the picture, there's even a "helium balloon drifting dreamily across the wooded valley." But as Joe and Clarissa watch the balloon touch down, thei...

In his novel, A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway illustrates in a simple and pure style the development of the relationship between a young American ambulance driver and an English nurse during World War I in Italy. This love-story is marked, as John A. Sanford describes in The Invisible Partners,...

The 19th century was a difficult time for many women and blacks because of the domination of white men over them. The social and economic hardships they faced in day to day life was a constant reminder of this domination. The social ideology in the story "Desiree's Baby" was powerfu...

William Shakespeare must have been endlessly fascinated by the relationships between men and women. The Bard's most popular plays dealt with the male and female dynamic, which were often played for laughs in satirical comedies, like Much Ado About Nothing. The play's action and conflict re...