Love and Duty: Amy Winehouse’s Sacrifice vs Charlotte Brönte’s Quiet Dignity
Are you an “If my man were fighting some unholy war, I’d be beside him,” or an “I need not sell my soul to buy bliss” kind of lover?
“Love is the end of duty,” Maester Aemon told Sam in Game of Thrones, and the second I heard the phrase I knew it would stick with me until I breathed my last breath. Although most of us will probably not be forced to deal with this dilemma to the extend heroic characters from history, literature and movies do, the way we see love and its relationship with duty (even if it’s just the duty of protecting our own mental and physical sanity) can have a very real impact on our lives.
Amy
On one side, Amy Winehouse. The song “Some Unholy War” came out as part of her second album Back to Black. These are the first three verses:
If my man was fighting
Some unholy war
I would be behind him
The lyrics can be read as a lover’s struggle with addiction — hers and/or her man’s, and the difficult decision of staying or leaving, but the message stated in the title is one Amy hinted, I believe, in a few of her songs. Love is fire, love is sacrifice.
I find Amy’s passion for Blake still compelling. In a room full of people, she sang to him, and him alone. But, as a survivor, the familiarity of her words and expressions is something I sometimes find difficult to deal with. Is love a flame that consumes it all, that overcomes it all, even bad decisions? Is it right to perish aiming for that intensity that, in an attempt to embrace life at it fullest, actually dumbs our senses?
It might have been love that made Blake and Amy walk bloodied and bruised through the streets of London that night. That made her sing about lying on the kitchen floor, reduced to pure sentiment and pain. Maybe it was love too that fueled her extraordinary voice and her cheerful, witty responses. But should love cost us our lives?
Charlotte / Jane
Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre saved my life. I know this is a pretty strong (and purposely mysterious) way to start a paragraph, but it really did. I must have read it twenty times in a matter of months. When I was growing up, the princesses were not really rescued by princes, they rescued THEM with their love. Unfortunately, some hearts cannot be changed. Some hearts feed from other hearts.
In the novel, Jane is faced with a painful dilemma. Love or dignity. Staying or leaving.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will,
she tells Rochester when he begs her to stay. Of course she wants love and companionship too, she has been by herself most of her life. But not if they come at the price of her freedom, of her dignity. The book begins with Jane being neither independent nor free, but her choices do take her there in the end. Unfortunately, in 1840, the words free and independent didn’t go well with woman and Charlotte died a renowned, but lonely, writer.
Verdict
Like most things, reaching a balance seems to be the ideal goal, and one worth pursuing. To reference another out-of-context phrase I enjoyed, this time from the TV series Girls, love should feel like going home.
I wouldn’t be able to express how much I trust these words now. Yes, love can be experienced with passion, with fire and blood. But few things can be experienced with more intensity as looking at the person you love in the eyes (your mom, your brother, your partner) and feel home.
