If the next time our governments propose to make war on a helpless civilian population we were to uncover our grief and guilt instead of our anger, h… - Germaine Greer

Not all love is comprehended in such a description, but the sickening
obsession which thrills the nervous frames of the heroines of
great love-affairs whether in cheap ‘romance’ comic-papers or in
hard-back novels of passionate wooing is just that. Women must
recognize in the cheap ideology of being in love the essential persuasion
to take an irrational and self-destructive step. Such obsession
has nothing to do with love, for love is not swoon, possession or
mania, but ‘a cognitive act, indeed the only way to grasp the innermost
core of personality.

The Poison Maiden has conceived by him, and is plumb ready to enter the divine category of mother, only one last fiend clubs her to death. The final clinch of male romanticism is that each man kills the thing he loves; whether she be Catharine in A Farewell to Arms, or the Grecian Urn, the 'tension that she be perfect' means that she must die, leavinf the hero's status as a great lover unchallenged. The pattern is still commonplace: the hero cannot marry. The sexual exploit must be conquest, not cohabitation and mutual tolerance.

Human beings love, despite their compulsions to limit it and exploit it chaotically. Their love persuades them to make vows, build houses and turn their passion ultimately to duty.