Comparing Shakespeare s Midsummer Night s Dream, Pride...

Compare and contrast the presentation of love and marriage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby. The main theme which brings A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby together is the idea of how love and marriage is presented. Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Austen all portray love and marriage as being two separate issues, which rarely intertwine. The different contexts in which these texts are written have all had a huge impact on the way in which love and marriage is portrayed. The Great Gatsby was set in the roaring twenties, a time where people enjoyed wealth and artistic innovation. Pride and Prejudice was set in the early 19th century, a time when wealth and marriage were hugely important. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written between 1590 and 1596, which is a comedic, light hearted play and focuses on marriage. In the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, marriage is a significant issue for almost every single character that we are introduced to. In the year 1813, when the novel was first published, it was natural for people to wed due to status and practicality instead of for true love. The very first line of the novel is the perfect introduction to this ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife’. Indeed, in 1813 marriage was seen as a financial transaction and women were seen as a commodity who had to be wed in order