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The Negative Effects Of Love In Hard Times By Charles Dickens

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The word “love” is amour in French, amor in Spanish, and amore in Italian. They share “am” at the start, which is the Latin root for love. Thus interestingly, love is self, is as Antoine Saint-Exupery has explained, the “process of my leading you back to yourself.” It is first planted in everyone through their early experience of being unconditionally loved as a child. Storge love then enables them to cultivate their own loving relationships, whether philia, eros, or self, and help their loved ones and themselves understand who they are. But love is as complicated and mysterious as the self, and without proper nurturing, it easily disappears and leaves lasting negative impacts on those failed to love. In the novel Hard Times by …show more content…

“If I had been stone blind...I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving” (219). The absence of love in their early childhood not only blinds them from recognizing emotions but also desensitizes them and obstructs them from developing feelings. The seed of love planted in Sissy’s heart and the seeds of discipline planted in the Gradgrinds’ head bear fruits later in the children's own relationships.
The consequence of unaffectionate environment quickly shows as Louisa denies Sissy’s love for her. After her father advises her to consider love “simply as one of tangible Fact” (102), Louisa becomes “impassive, proud and cold--held Sissy at a distance” (107), completely ignoring the previous wonder she had about Sissy. As Louisa blindly follows her father’s advice, marries Bounderby, and takes pride in separating herself from Sissy’s fancy and care, she becomes aloof and unresponsive like her mother. The news of her mother’s illness is hastily delivered as a simple fact, and she also receives it as one. “There’s a pain somewhere in the room” (202). Her feelings are so numbed that she cannot even sense her own pain that her cold mother senses. Even after her baptism in the rain and her confrontation with her suppressed emotions in her nadir, Louisa is unable to relearn how to love. She is never married and has “no fantastic vow, or bond, or brotherhood...or fancy dress” (300). In contrast, Sissy’s unconditional love for Louisa never diminishes

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