Emotional And Physical Attraction example essay topic

Lust, desire, love - these are the stages an individual goes through when having a physical and emotional attraction towards someone. However, lust does not always transform itself into a stronger desire or love for that matter. Representative of this are the characters in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night where physical and emotional relationships result in varying degrees of attraction that never quite reach true love. The physical attraction is what happens to the body when an individual makes contact with another individual for the first time. This contact can be tactile or visual. When the Duke's "eyes did see Olivia first" (1.1.

20) that "instant was [he] turned into a hart, and [his] desires, like fell and cruel hounds; E'er since pursue [him]" (1.1. 22-24). The moment the Duke saw Olivia he knew that he wanted her and no one else. The Duke did not need to touch Olivia to feel some type of attraction towards her. The vision of her simply met his physical needs, which is the only reason he liked her so much.

Another occasion when Shakespeare illustrated physical attraction is when Olivia meets Cesa rio for the first time. She describes to the audience "thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit Do give thee fivefold blazon. Not too fast; soft, soft... Methinks I feel this youth's perfections" (1.5.

293-297). Here, Olivia's attraction is again purely physical because all she describes was his physical characteristics rather than his intellect or how she felt about him emotionally. Olivia's attraction towards him rose simply out of her lust. She did not address his personality because she was completely satisfied with the "youth's perfections" (1.5.

297) dealing with his physical being. Even when Olivia figured out about Sebastian, she never opposed to the fact of getting married with him. Also, the relationship between Olivia and Sebastian is an unadulterated physical attraction because they did not really have a conversation of common interest. Beyond physical attraction, emotional attraction is what occurs next. The individual begins to converse and find things in common and that is how the emotional attraction develops.

In Act II scene i. v., the emotional attraction between the Duke and Viola begin to develop as they converse about the "kind of woman" (2.4. 26) they both like. Duke tells Viola that he would like a woman "of [her] complexion" (2.4. 27) and "wears she to him". (2.4. 30) This illustrates an emotional attraction developing because the Duke and Viola are bonding about common interests.

An emotional attraction differs greatly from a physical because the two sides actually converse to find common ground. With a physical attraction, it usually serves to be one-sided, and it might be hard to realize the other side's thoughts. But with an emotional attraction, both sides convey their thoughts through their interactions with each other. In William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, many of the characters had either or both physical and emotional attraction towards each other to convey to the reader that an individual needs to have some type of feeling for the other individual in order for the relationship to last. Shakespeare wanted to reveal to the reader that emotional and physical attraction has different degrees, but they never reach true love.

When reading, the reader learns that love cannot be truly reached through emotional and physical attraction..