Patricia Cohen's Reality Television: Surprising Throwback To The Past
645 Words3 Pages
In the essay, Reality Television: Surprising Throwback to the Past?, by Patricia Cohen, it is thought that all reality television is loss to America’s values. The author makes strong comparison of Jane Austen and Edith Wharton’s Victorian age novels to modern society’s reality television dating shows. The main ideas of the essay are reality television’s portrayal of a female’s role, financial arrangements, and different types of engagements. In this essay, a comparison and contrast will be performed to provide the countless types of similarities and differences of historical marriages including financial arrangements, courtships, and arranged marriages. Just as history progresses, so does thoughts, outlooks, and overviews of what old-fashioned marriage even is.
Initially, just as marriages in the Victorian age included dowries so does today’s modern day marriages. These modern day “dowries” involved of different terms as the world continues to develop and transform. On the reality dating show, Cupid, Shannon is to select a “husband” and stay married for year to receive the prize of one million dollars. In…show more content… Frequently aids in finding a spouse. The author proposed “And while the elaborate courtship rituals and codes may now seem curiously antique, they did serve to cushion the brutally competitive marriage market” (Cohen 305). Victorian era courting and modern day courting both reject the wedding process. It diminishes the worrying of finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. In contrast, Victorian era courtships were strict. Today when you are courting this can include going on dates to the movie theater, dinner dates and going to the park and having a picnic. Victorian era courting included masquerade balls and other formal activities. These formal activities gave the singles in the Victorian era a chance to socialize with other singles of that