Love in Postmodernity. Zadie Smiths Approach of Unconventional Postmodern Relationships in her Novel "N-W"

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics - English - Literature, Works, grade: 3,0, University of Bamberg (English Literature Department), course: English Literature, language: English, abstract: Love is commonly known as the indescribable passion between two people who found each other and are planning to stay together forever. But the modernised divorce system and such hardships as finances have created the impression that the romantic idea of love has faded the last decades. This phenomenon engages not only sociologists but also authors who are giving thoughts to those developments in their literally works and therefore explore the reasons of such developments associated with postmodern pair-relationships.

The high divorce rates are one of the major results of a change in pair-relationships in the western society and the attitudes towards the different manners against having a relationship changed drastically throughout the last century. So postmodernity is the time for free experimentation, diversity, the time of myriads of possibilities, and the time where people respect the choice of the single individual for individualisation and self-development.

A lot of people take those many featured chances and explore as much as they can, not only according to their economic possibilities, but also according to their private way of life in their relationships. They grant themselves every personal freedom, the highest profits, and put themselves before anything else. As an effect people are opposed more openly to serial relationships. On the one hand they are trying to compensate their mistakes of their previous partners and are learning to distinguish between what they want and don ¿t want. On the other hand they live their live as they please not really bearing in mind that the fast change in social values distracts them from their original wish of not spending their live alone when they get old.

But according to pair-relationships, this lifestyle does not always end well and never before were the divorce rates in Britain as high as in postmodern times. So the question emerges, if in the end it is possible to remain in the state of happiness in a relationship or if passionate love gives space to individual desires supported by the patterns of contemporary unconventional relationships.