The self is always and inevitably deficient

Dr. Ealy's lecture about Celestina left me really thinking about life and what makes it worth living. The story of the young couple who falls in love at first makes one want to be so happy and excited. What can be better than a love story centered around a young couple when you know its going to be filled with lust and longing? Dr. Ealy brought up rather interesting point of how love can never completely fulfill one's longings. This brings to light a darker side to this love story that leads to both parts of the young couple's death. It is true when a person falls in love they fall in love with an ideal image of the other person. They see them much as Calisto saw Melibea. Their image of their love made their partner seem etheral and almost too perfect to be true. Yet, this image does not exist, and when the person comes to terms with this it brings in a sense of melancholy and a sense of unfulfillment.

Through out his entire lecture I wanted to scream this isn't true this isn't true, but it is. I wonder though is it such a bad thing to know that you love the other person more than the other person loves you? While it is some what unfulfilling it should leave a person knowing that they have the capability to go above and beyond material reciprocation with their feelings. I guess how I see it is that it isn't really love unless you can care for some one more than they care for you. It shows a sort of selfless abandon that I feel has to go hand in hand with love. With love comes vulnerability and uncertainty, and yes pain goes right there with it. How can you appreciate the good if you have no other moments in life to let you know that this is in fact a good moment? Cliche, I know, but it is so true.

It also causes you to appreciate the moment you are in because you only ever have that moment and you don't get it back. So, why waste your time thinking about some unhappy memory of the past or planning every step of your future. The present is already history when you decide to recognize it.

I have to disagree with Dr. Ealy on his point about how Celestina helped to free women from the constraints of social expectations. Yes, she was able to help young girls experience sex on their own terms first, but she would patch them back up to be violently possessed by a man they don't want to be with. In a way it seems as though she is just assisting in an inevitable contracted rape. It sickened me when I read how she had sold the same girl to a man as a virgin. It had to have been so painful each time she was sewn back together and then ripped back open. This violence makes me cringe. Why give them just a small taste of freedom and sex that is willing when she will only put them right back where they belong? She is just as much a part of keeping women under control as the men are. The difference is she knows the violence that each girl is going to be subjected to. I just don't see how this is freeing them of patriarchal society.