Unrequited Love And Gestures Of Consecration Essay — страница 3

stabs Emilia and presents her body to the prurient prince and gives himself up to the authorities. As Emilia dies, she utters, ?broken a rose before the storm robbed it of its petals.? (Lessing, 81) Again, this reference to ?a rose? suggests that the Romantic ideal for women was one of purity of heart and temperance. Although Emilia died by her father?s hand, her death can be looked upon as a moral suicide. Just as Emilia felt death was the only escape from the net she was enmeshed in, Werther felt death was the only escape from the web he had created for himself with his ceaseless love for Lotte. While Werther and Emilia take on different roles in the stories, where one is the lover, and the other is the beloved, death is the only feasible solution to each of their plights.

While both the prince and Werther sought to win over the women that they loved in dynamic manners, both were futile enfin. Both Emilia and Lotte took action to protect their womanly virtues in the eyes of the principal male figure in their lives (Odoardo and Albert respectively.) It seems quite appropriate that Werther had a copy of Emilia Galotti on his deathbed, for the presence of overlapping themes between the two scenarios is unequivocal. 1.Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Emilia Galotti. New York: German Book Center, N.A., INC, 1979. 2.von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. The Sorrows of Young Werther. London: Penguin Books, 1989.