He is a dreamer like yourself. You both dream of another world that does not exist, and never will.

“Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly checked by other considerations, and she soon felt that even her vanity was insufficient, when required to depend on his affection for her— for a woman who had already refused him— as able to overcome a sentiment so natural as abhorrence against relationship with Wickham.”

– Jane Austen

Take me back to those times, to times when unintentional glances were the beginnings of an epic romance, where subtle concise vocabulary determined whether you were  admired or not. Now you think you’re in love when you are described as “hot”. Back in the day being romanced was not about just buying a dozen red roses as the local grocery store and a cheap Walgreens chocolate heart. It was about feeling wanted in a simple and sophisticated way. All romance is today is just a movie genre and an excuse for Hallmark’s existence.

Back in the time of Dukes and Duchesses, of detailed gowns and exuberant jewelery, of seven course meals and extravagant balls, everything just seemed more romantic. Electricity had yet to be invented, so dark rooms were lightened by candlelight as it shimmered off the room’s occupants’ flesh.  Today, in a time of guys and chicks, of mini skirts and tongue piercings, of half a dozen tequila shots and jam-packed nightclubs, things have changed. At sunset, the horndogs come out and our vision becomes impaired in dark rooms brightened by electric lights, blinding our eyes and our senses. With each others tongue down our throats, we have yet to realize the near extinction of romance.

Lady Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire by Thomas Gainsborough

However, the seventeenth century carried with it mischievous lies and cruel affairs. Condemned to eternal unhappiness through fixed marriages, most found comfort in a different bed than their spouses’. Then again, is that really any different than today?

I’ll take the good with the bad.

Take me back,

Laura Marianne

“She’d stopped reading the kind of women’s magazine that talked about romance and knitting, and started reading the kind of women’s magazine that talked about orgasms, but apart from making a mental note to have one if ever the occasion presented itself she dismissed them as only romance and knitting in a new form.”

– Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, 1990