Romance Throughout the Years
Shakespeare, love, roses, and picnics. These are all things that we think about when we think romance. However the meaning of romance has changed quite a bit over the years.
If you were to go back and live in the Romantic period, you would find that romance was not even close to what we think it is today. Back then romance was creativity. You would be romantic if you had the ability to make up a creative story on the spot. Let’s say you break your mother’s favorite dish and she asks you what happened, you would be romantic if you could quickly and creatively make up a story for what had happened. There was a huge spider next to your baby brother so you had to run to get him and in the process you knocked over the dish and it broke. Back in the Romantic period, you would be considered very romantic for this story.
In our society today, when we think romance, we think love. To be romantic is for your date to show up with your favorite flowers, open your door for you, or to pull out your chair. Shakespeare’s most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, is considered a romance. Romeo cannot live without Juliet so when he thinks she is dead he kills himself. When Juliet wakes up to find Romeo dead, she kills herself because she believes her life cannot go on without him. That is what is considered romantic to our society.
Girls especially want to be romanced; we want a guy to sweep us off our feet. We want him to bring us flowers and buy us jewelry. We want a guy to cook for us and for us to eat by candlelight. All of these things we find romance in. Some girls even define their lives with the romance they do or do not have, whereas guys, on the other hand, could care less about romance.
The meaning change of romance was pretty dramatic. The only connection they still have after all these years is the fact that the most romantic situations take creativity, whether it is making up a story to tell your mom or planning a romantic evening...