Romantic Love and the Individual
The idea of a romantic love existing between individuals presupposes the existence of art within people. Art, by its nature, draws heavily on the emotional life of the individual and demands that the inner aspects of the soul be revealed and given over to the medium in which it will be expressed � whether it be the canvas, the screen, or physical love. Romantic love sought to communicate art through a deeper expression, made possible through greatly idealized sex. Sexuality had become more important; beauty and love were interpreted mainly through the erotic experience. This convergence of two bodies marked the emotional union of two souls, and thus, the communication of art. However, the idea that a union was needed to transmit art lessened the need for individuality. With the rise of romantic love, the courtship based on individual traits lost its place in social interactions. No longer did the beloved have to be good or beautiful, for the emphasis on emotion had emancipated people from this aged definition of desirable. What was desired was the unknown of eroticism, a mixture of emotional dependence, a desire for physical and emotional union, and an increased empathy for the target of one�s affections.
Romantic love, with its basis in eroticism, found many different idealized forms: the innocent and pious virgin that von Innstetten desires in Effie Briest to the reckless femme fatale that Freud�s Dora wishes to be. The relationship of Effie and von Instetten left much to be desired; von Instetten truly believed in the romanticism of their dynamics and believed that his idea of a woman could be brought about within Effie. However, his view of the romantic life clashed with hers. In one scene, Effie tells him that he is �an affectionate soul�you just don�t want to show it, you think it�s not proper�� (89). Later, she asks him if he was �aware that�s what I�ve always wanted to be. We have to be seductive, otherwise we are nothing� (90). Even Effie�s father notices: �[she feels] a love of pleasure and ambition�her ambition will be satisfied [by his ambition], but what about her desire for fun�he won�t be much fun�and the worst of it is, he won�t even seriously address the problem� (28-9). For her, love needed to be reckless and inspired, and thus she found outlets for that, including an affair with Crampas and a secretive reserve under which she hid her turbulent inner feelings.
The reactions to Effie�s desertion remarkably illustrate his capitulation to the old social standards and her championing of Romantic love. His decision to shoot her lover comes from his fear of being a social outcast: ��going against it is unacceptable; society despises you for it, and in the end, you despise yourself�I�ve no choice� (173). In the end, he could not pretend to be a Romantic any longer; his ambition, his pride, and his unwillingness to sacrifice himself on any level to Effie meant that he had failed to achieve any emotional transcendental state with Effie. Effie is angered by this. She believes in freedom of expression: �You don�t have to be allowed. Honour, honour, honour�And me to blame�I�m disgusted at the thought of what I did; but I�m even more disgusted when I think of how virtuous you both are� (202). Later, she understands: �Everything he did was right�there was a lot of good in his nature, and he was as noble as anyone can be who lacks the real capacity for love� (216). After Effie�s death, Mrs. Briest reflects that �I wonder if perhaps she wasn�t too young� (217). Her inability to share her emotional experience with her husband was key to the destruction of their marriage � it opened her eyes to his dependency on his ambition rather than to her. Their love failed; she wanted their marriage to be a perfect union while he merely wanted her to increase his own standing as an individual in society.
Sigmund Freud, in his prefatory to Dora, acknowledges that sex is a strong driving force in mental analyses, but reminds his readers that �[it is] the spirit of the age, owing to which we have reached a happy state of things in which no serious book can any longer be sure of its existence� (Dora 3-4). In his descriptions, the sexual drive plays a large role in the development of romantic relationships throughout the life of a person, in this case, a young girl. In the complex mental associations of a pubescent mind, many preconceptions are developed and left to affect the emotional expression of the developing child. In Dora�s case, her relationships devolved into a perverted expression of her inner desires. Her romantic attraction to Herr K was masked and transferred to a feeling of possessiveness for her dad. Her jealousy was directed first to her mother, who competed with her for her father�s attentions, and then to Frau K, who was his lover and the homosexual object of Dora�s affections in the past.
She wanted to be loved, and thus came her desire to be a different kind of Romantic ideal, the femme fatale. �The dream confirms�that you are summoning up your old love for your father in order to protect yourself against your love for Herr K� (62). She is afraid of accepting her desires, because �not only [are you] afraid of Herr K, but�you are still more afraid of yourself, and of the temptation that you feel to yield to him�these efforts prove�how deeply you loved him� (62). Her love for Herr K had no basis in his individual traits; she merely sees the sexual void that he experiences and so desperately searches for in her: �so you are ready to give Herr K. what his wife withholds from him� (52). Her frantic displays of illness at home toward her father�s absences can be depicted as a longing for love and attention from her beloved, which again, is her father in lieu of Herr K. �Her sympathetic imitation of her father [by taking over his cough as her own]�showed itself capable of representing her relations with Herr K; it could express her regret at his absence and her wish to make him a better wife� (75). The cough which she had taken was another significant realization of her quest for union: the irritation of her throat �concerned a part of the body which in Dora had to a high degree retained its significance as an erotogenic zone� (74). For this psychological analysis, the trappings of love only concerned sexuality and inner erotic desires, a perfect fit to the Romantic definition of love.
Neither of these two literary works describes an ideal Romantic relationship; however, they illustrate the hardships associated with developing romantic love. A successful, though physically unquenched love occurs in Thomas Mann�s Death in Venice. The homosexual Aschenbach is able to observe the child Tadzio from far and admire him; Mann�s words evoke an animal sexuality and tension that perfectly described the erotic experience. �He was more beautiful than any words could say, and [he] felt, as so often before, that language can only praise, but not reproduce, the beauty that appeals to the senses� (Mann 340). Here, Aschenbach is able to worship and far, and even experience a quasi-emotional union with the child: �Tadzio smiled; smiled at him; his lips slowly opened into an eloquent, intimate, charming and candid smile. It was the smile of Narcissus leaning over the mirroring water�� (340). The expression of such a wonderful emotion, likening the receiver of the smile to the smiler himself, is an incredibly deep communication of the desires of the child�s soul, and of Aschenbach�s as well. In this relationship, built on observances from afar, individuality is not even brought into question; both understand that a further relationship cannot be � it would ruin the apex of romantic love that they had reached. Aschenbach finally finds this out for himself: �Beauty alone is divine and visible at once, and so it is the path of the senses�to the spirit�can [he] ever find wisdom and true manhood if he takes the path of the senses to reach the spiritual?...passion is our exaltation, and our longing must remain love � that is our bliss and our shame� (363).
For a Romantic relationship to succeed, both partners must be emotionally dependent on each other to the same degree, and the erotic experience must be shared; obviously, Effie and von Instetten were not able to conjure up that intimacy and were never able to progress beyond feeling that the other was merely good. Individuality and the importance of the self was disciplined and diminished � rather, devotion to the other was a common characteristic. Dora was hysterical and her dependence on love and emotional involvement displayed itself as a range of symptoms that had been used to control her relationships and erotic desires. The expression of art from a common intimacy came from a feeling that the great unknowns present in the act of physical love could bring emotional satisfaction � to achieve union, both partners must be willing to bare their sexual desires to each other. For Aschenbach, this is easy enough; by watching and being aware of his passion, he has achieved Romantic love � the knowing smile given him by Tadzio only confirms that his passion is received and reflected. The idea of romantic love relied on a heightened sense of mutual eroticism and sexuality and not on an individualist philosophy.