The Deceived Husband: A Kleinian Approach to the Literature of Infidelity

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1 University Press Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-8 of 8 items for: keywords : cuckold The Deceived Husband: A Kleinian Approach to the Literature of Infidelity Item type: book acprof:oso/ This book studies the representation in European literature of adultery, focusing in particular on the figure of the husband. Drawing on psychoanalysis, and primarily the work of Melanie Klein, it argues that the differing representations of the deceived husband evidence anxieties within patriarchal society about gender and power, and ultimately about death and the unknown. Detailed discussions of a wide range of texts including The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, Othello, Madame Bovary, Effi Briest, Anna Karenina, La Regenta, and Flaubert's Parrot reveal that fundamental anxieties about masculinity are repeatedly articulated in two main characterisations of the deceived husband: the cuckold and the man of honour. These are representations which can be usefully understood, the book shows, with reference to the two early developmental positions forwarded by Klein: the paranoid schizoid and the depressive positions. The Deceived Husband: A Theoretical Introduction acprof:oso/ This book explores the relationship between two statements as they apply to husbands, but also as they apply to the notion in general of being a man. The first is about the fate of man as husband, and the second is about the (unspecified) things a man must do if he is to be a man. They express in brief form the much more extensive expectations about the nature of men as husbands and as deceived husbands that will Page 1 of 5

2 be revealed by the literary examples to be discussed. What is fascinating about the portrayals of these husbands in their suffering of marital infidelity is the degree to which there are common characteristics to be observed in them, characteristics which suggest a generality of pattern, formation, and explanation. The book targets two main types of portrayal of the husband the cuckold and the man of honour and discusses the principal theoretical framework on object-relations theory. Cuckoldry, Honour, and Adultery: The Language of Infidelity acprof:oso/ The concept of sexual infidelity is both widespread and ancient. It requires, as a precondition, the concept of sexual fidelity, and further that it has as its context a society in which there is the institution of marriage, or some similar long-term heterosexual and exclusive relationship, and in which the expectation is that there shall be conjugal fidelity, at least on the part of the wife. The language relating to infidelity reiterates patriarchal concern with the infidelity of wives rather than that of husbands. At first sight, some of the language relating to the cuckold appears to give weight to the socio-historical argument that matters of inheritance are the reason why the fault of wives appears to cause interest and concern, whereas the sexual fault of husbands that leads them from the marriage bed is taken so much for granted that it is not equally regarded as a fault. The Cuckold acprof:oso/ In considering the tale of a cuckold, Geoffrey Chaucer's Miller's Tale, and others, in the light of Kleiman analysis, there is a major distinction to be made. Within the character of the cuckold himself, one can observe an extremely primitive level of development, characterised by splitting, denial, reaction formation, and envy. As often as not, the cuckold is one Page 2 of 5

3 who can barely tolerate the taking-in of information; that is, he is in an infantile state that appears to be prior to the paranoid-schizoid position, in which there is at least the defensive splitting of the self to cope with information, welcome and unwelcome, from the outside world. This primitive state of the cuckold as a character, however, contrasts sharply with what one can construe as the meaning of his portrayal in literature, and it is this meaning that this chapter explores first, before turning to examples of cuckolds in Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio. Men of Honour acprof:oso/ A different, and complementary, view of the wronged husband is presented by the concept of the man of honour. To distinguish in general terms between the two, this chapter highlights the respective attributes of the cuckold and the man of honour, taking as paradigms for this the characterisation of the cuckold as he has emerged from Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio, and the man of honour as he is generally conceived in the Spanish Golden Age drama. In the case of each type, there is a question of identity at stake. The husband who is a cuckold is automatically removed from centre-stage and placed firmly in an ancillary role. His identity has depended upon his status as a husband who could assert his patriarchal rights in marriage, and this identity disappears with his failure to do so. The Adulteress s Husband acprof:oso/ Adulteresses' husbands represented in the nineteenth-century adultery novels discussed in this chapter range through the entire spectrum from cuckold to man of honour, with the majority moving between the two. The chapter takes examples of texts where the husband can most closely be aligned with one or other of the models discussed so far: Madame Page 3 of 5

4 Bovary, He Knew He Was Right, and Effi Briest. It then takes La Regenta as an example of a text where the treatment of the husband is more complex, but the central theme is still the husband's relation to infidelity. Dombey and Son and The Kreutzer Sonata are then taken as examples of narratives containing powerful subtexts of denial and splitting in the face of emotion and sexuality. Finally, Anna Karenina provides a text where the complexity of the husband's reaction to infidelity is set in a web of meditation upon marriage and society. Men of Distinction acprof:oso/ In his discussion of The Winter's Tale, Wilbur Sanders dwells on the unusual fact that Leontes, wrongly suspecting his wife of adultery, and receiving the news that she has died as a result of his wrath, opts to draw close to his grief, and face it in all its intensity. This chapter concentrates on those images of exceptional husbands, men of distinction. The idealised belief is that it may be possible to locate the ultimate depressive position in relation to the deceived husband. Such an ultimate position would have two dimensions: the capacity of the deceived husband as character to confront his grief, and the capacity of the literary text to contain and articulate that experience. The depressive position vis-à-vis women's infidelity is sketched, if not in relation to the cuckold, at least in the social fact and implications of the literature of cuckoldry. In its turn, it is replaced by the depressive position as exemplified in the adultery novels. To Law for Our Children : Norm and Jurisdiction in Webster, Rowley, and Heywood's Cure for a Cuckold Bradin Cormack in A Power to Do Justice: Jurisdiction, English Literature, and the Rise of Common Law Published in print: 2008 Published Online: February 2013 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University of Chicago Press DOI: / chicago/ Page 4 of 5

5 Focusing on Cure for a Cuckold (1624), this chapter examines the question of jurisdictional complexity internal to English law by tracking how the sea's disruptive energies implode, claustrophobically, into the space of London. Written by John Webster, William Rowley, and John Heywood, Cure for a Cuckold tells the story of Compass, a sailor who refuses to acknowledge what his neighbors and the law might tell him: that his wife's illegitimate son is not properly his own. Describing Compass's response to the normative order by invoking a labyrinth of complementary jurisdictional orders (including canon law, civil law, common law, manorial law, and municipal law), the play produces in Compass's evasions a consequentialist ethics that is grounded in a splitting off of effect from cause and in the dramatic projection of a jurisdictional imaginary capable of sustaining a norm alternative to the law's own jurisdictionally constituted norms. Its fascination with jurisdiction and with semi-technical distinctions within and between legal orders speaks to the continuing importance of the Inns of Court as sponsors and knowing audience for theatrical and literary production. Page 5 of 5