The assertion that modern jealousy is a noble passion is of course to
be taken with reservations. Where it leads to murder or revenge it is
a reversion to the barbarous type, and apart from that it is, like all
affections of the mind, liable to abnormal and morbid states. Harry
Campbell writes in the _Lancet_ (1898) that
"the inordinate development of this emotion always betokens a
neurotic diathesis, and not infrequently indicates the oncoming
of insanity. It is responsible for much useless suffering and not
a little actual disease."
Dr. O'Neill gives a curious example of the latter, in the same
periodical. He was summoned to a young woman who informed him that she
wished to be cured of jealousy: "I am jealous of my husband, and if
you do not give me something I shall go out of my mind." The husband
protested his innocence and declared there was no cause whatever for
her accusations:
"The wife persisted in reiterating them and so the
wrangle went on till suddenly she fell from her chair
on the floor in a fit, the spasmodic movements of which
were so strange and varied that it would be almost
impossible to describe them. At one moment the patient
was extended at full length with her body arched
forward in a state of opisthotonos. The next minute she
was in a sitting position with the legs drawn up,
making, while her hands clutched her throat, a guttural
noise. Then she would throw herself on her back and
thrust her arms and legs about to the no small danger
of those around her. Then becoming comparatively quiet
and supine she would quiver all over while her eyelids
trembled with great rapidity. This state perhaps would
be followed by general convulsive movements in which
she would put herself into the most grotesque postures
and make the most unlovely grimaces. At last the fit
ended, and exhausted and in tears she was put to bed.
The patient was a lithe, muscular woman and to restrain
her movements during the attack with the assistance at
hand was a matter of impossibility, so all that could
be done was to prevent her injuring herself and to
sprinkle her freely with cold water. The
after-treatment was more geographical than medical. The
husband ceased doing business in a certain town where
the object of his wife's suspicions lived."
I have been told by a perfectly healthy married woman that when
jealous of her husband she felt a sensation as of some liquid welling
up in her throat and suffocating her. Pride came into play in part;
she did not want others to think that her husband preferred an
ignorant girl to her--a woman of great physical and mental charm.
Such jealousy, if unfounded, may be of the "self-harming" kind of
which one of Shakspere's characters exclaims "Fie! beat it hence!" Too
often, however, women have cause for jealousy, as modern civilized man
has not overcome the polygamous instincts he has inherited from his
ancestors since time immemorial. But whereas cause for feminine
jealousy has existed always, the right to feel it is a modern
acquisition. Moreover, while Apache wives were chaste from fear and
Greek women from necessity, modern civilized women are faithful from
the sense of honor, duty, affection, and in return for their devotion
they expect men to be faithful for the same reasons. Their jealousy
has not yet become retrospective, like that of the men; but they
justly demand that after marriage men shall not fall below the
standard of purity they have set up for the women, and they insist on
a conjugal monopoly of the affections as strenuously as the men do. In
due course of time, as Dr. Campbell suggests, "we may expect the
monogamous instinct in man to be as powerful as in some of the lower
animals; and feminine jealousy will help to bring about this result;
for if women were indifferent on this point men would never improve."