ROXANA
As for women's jealousy--they are suspicious, they have infinitely more
at stake than we, they have made a greater sacrifice to love, have far
fewer means of distraction and, above all, far fewer means of keeping
a check on their lover's actions. A woman feels herself degraded by
jealousy; she thinks her lover is laughing at her, or, still worse,
making fun of her tenderest transports. Cruelty must tempt her--and
yet, legally, she cannot kill her rival!
For women, jealousy must be a still more abominable evil than it is for
men. It is the last degree of impotent rage and self-contempt[1] which
a heart can bear without breaking.
I know no other remedy for so cruel an evil, than the death of the
one who is the cause of it or of the one who suffers. An example of
French jealousy is the story of Madame de la Pommeraie in _Jacques le
Fataliste_(19).
La Rochefoucauld says: "We are ashamed of owning we are jealous, but
pride ourselves on having been and of being capable of jealousy."[2]
Poor woman dares not own even to having suffered this torture, so much
ridicule does it bring upon her. So painful a wound can never quite
heal up.
If cold reason could be unfolded before the fire of imagination with
the merest shade of success, I would say
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to those wretched women, who are unhappy from jealousy: "There is a
great difference between infidelity in man and in you. In you, the
importance of the act is partly direct, partly symbolic. But, as an
effect of the education of our military schools, it is in man the
symbol of nothing at all. On the contrary, in women, through the effect
of modesty, it is the most decisive of all the symbols of devotion. Bad
habit makes it almost a necessity to men. During all our early years,
the example set by the so-called 'bloods' makes us set all our pride on
the number of successes of this kind--as the one and only proof of our
worth. For you, your education acts in exactly the opposite direction."
As for the value of an action as symbol--in a moment of anger I upset
a table on to the foot of my neighbour; that gives him the devil of a
pain, but can quite easily be fixed up--or again, I make as if to give
him a slap in the face....
The difference between infidelity in the two sexes is so real, that a
woman of passion may pardon it, while for a man that is impossible.
Here we have a decisive ordeal to show the difference between
passion-love and love from pique: infidelity in women all but kills the
former and doubles the force of the latter.
Haughty women disguise their jealousy from pride. They will spend long
and dreary evenings in silence with the man whom they adore, and whom
they tremble to lose, making themselves consciously disagreeable in
his eyes. This must be one of the greatest possible tortures, and is
certainly one of the most fruitful sources of unhappiness in love. In
order to cure these women, who merit so well all our respect, it needs
on the man's side a strong and out-of-the-way line of action--but,
mind, he must not seem to notice what is going on--for example, a long
journey with them undertaken at a twenty-four hours' notice.
[1] This contempt is one of the great causes of suicide: people kill
themselves to give their sense of honour satisfaction.
[2] _Pensée_ 495. The reader will have recognised, without my marking
it each time, several other thoughts of celebrated writers. It is
history which I am attempting to write, and such thoughts are the facts.
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