The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

I feel like we always read about these guys who are so in love with some glamorous, out-of-their-league woman. J. Alfred Prufrock is Gatsby, only older, and Poe, only more sane. It's a literary trope that's worn out it's welcome to me, only one notch above the more common dead horse writers love to  beat, the love-triangle. Madame recommended a book to me called, The Cult of the Saints which is basically the in-depth analysis of the culture of Virgin Mary and the world's fascination with saintly, virginal women. Even before the birth of Christ, women who stayed on a more devout, modest path were often held above women that engaged in scandalous behavior. All female saints prior to the fourteenth/fifteenth century were considered devout women because they abstained from sex. That was the way to solidify their sainthood. Saint Joan of Arc was a French martyr who saved France at 18 years old, but the people of her time appreciated her because she preached Christianity and abstained from romantic relationships. Would she have been canonized if she had been a prostitute before leading the French army to war? She probably would never have been given the chance to lead the French army to war. This woman who captivates Prufrock, although never described, has basically driven him to live his life alone and drowned in anxiety. She has to be beautiful, or at least in some way remarkably above the "average" woman. I think that even though people try to say that our modern world has moved away from that unattainable Virgin Mary image, we haven't. There's criticism for women who dress promiscuously, dress-codes in place to prevent the sighting of an exposed shoulder, and, the most horrific, is that there are cultures where a woman who has lost her virginity (by force or choice) is no longer allowed to live within her home community. There was a news story a couple of years ago about a girl in some Middle Eastern country who looked upon a boy and her father killed her on the spot. Why? Women are always compared to saints. They always will be.