Strangling, stoning, burning, impaling, flaying alive, tearing limb
from limb, throwing from a tower, burying alive, disemboweling,
enslaving, drowning, mutilating, are some of the punishments inflicted
by savages and barbarians in all parts of the world on adulterous men
or women. Specifications would be superfluous. Let one case stand for
a hundred. Maximilian Prinz zu Wied relates (I., 531, 572), that the
Indians (Blackfeet),
"severely punished infidelity on the part of their
wives by cutting off their noses. At Fort Mackenzie we
saw a number of women defaced in this hideous manner.
In about a dozen tents we saw at least half a dozen
females thus disfigured."
Must we not look upon the state of mind which leads to such terrible
actions as genuine jealousy? Is there any difference between it and
the feeling we ourselves know under that name? There is--a world-wide
difference. Take Othello, who though a Moor, acts and feels more like
an Englishman. The desire for revenge animates him too: "I'll tear her
to pieces," he exclaimed when Iago slanders Desdemona--"will chop her
into messes," and as for Cassio,
Oh, that the slave had forty thousand lives!
One is too poor, too weak for my revenge.
* * * * *
Arise, black vengeance from the hollow hell.