The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 1/7. Love and Jealousy
LOVE AND JEALOUSY.
A lady-friend has requested of me an answer to the following questions:
- 1. "Is jealousy an inborn or an inbred passion?"
- 2. "Can a human being love several persons at once, and if he believes himself able to do this, can this capacity be called love?"
Logic demands that I answer the second question first, for jealousy must be looked at as a concomitant of love, not love as a concomitant of jealousy.
What is love? In simple words: a passionate attachment to a person of the other sex, in whom a man (or woman) delights in the highest degree, and for whom he feels the highest degree of appreciation, confidence, and good-will. Through the highest degree of appreciation, etc., we place the person on an ideal standpoint. The conception of the ideal, however, excludes every second ideal. By the side of an ideal we can as little have another ideal of the same kind as the believer can have another God besides the well-known Universal One.
If we conceive of love as a passionate enthusiasm and devotion to a thereby idealized person, it is self-evident that its object can never be more than one single individual at the same time. "Thou entirely fillest my soul,"[1] sings the poet, and a full soul has as little room for other contents as a full bottle of champagne.
But now it happens very frequently in this queer world which denies to most people the opportunity of entering into suitable relations, or the liberty of dissolving unsuitable connections, that an object of love which "fills the soul entirely" cannot be found. In such a case one person can of course be able to embrace several objects of attachment at once, not only with the arms, but also with the soul, and it may be possible that a man, if he has a very large soul, must have recourse to a dozen or more women in order to fill it; yes, he may even feel sincere good-will towards each one of them, and may value each one especially for her individual qualities, just as we value the qualities of various flowers. But this can as little be an entirely satisfactory relation for each one of the twelve loved ones as for the man himself, if he is capable of a real, passionate, i.e., a true, love, which cannot be otherwise than exclusive. He will, should he even have the choice among a thousand women, still feel a void, and gladly exchange the thousand for a single one whom he can love as his ideal with complete devotion.
For common men, or men corrupted by our present education, it is a mere pretext for their inclinations towards the harem if they put up a doctrine of the "plurality of love;" uncorrupted men can at most look upon the doctrine as a make-shift for the misfortune of not having an opportunity in this perverse world for a free choice according to natural affinity. In a world as it ought to be the exclusiveness of love will be all the moréa law because no free woman will want to share a beloved man with another, and vice versa.
Thus we have reached the subject of jealousy. I would not designate jealousy either as an "inborn" nor as an "inbred" passion. It is an accidental passion, for which the faculty indeed is inborn. In its nobler form and in its nobler motives it arises from love and can, according to circumstances and the character of the person from whom it emanates, differ in its nature and in its mode of expression. The noblest jealousy is a sort of ambition or pride of the loving person who feels it as an insult that another one should assume it. as possible to supplant his love, or it is the highest degree of devotion which sees a desecration of its object in the foreign invasion, as it were, of his own altar. A jealousy of this sort, which would fain keep away everything unworthy from the beloved person, is far superior to that lower grade which arises from the anxiety of losing the beloved object through the approach of another, perhaps worthier, person. This sort of jealousy arises either from weakness, which from a sense of its own want of lovable qualities is not convinced of being sure of its cause, or from distrust, which perhaps, by applying its own standard inversely, thinks the beloved person capable of infidelity. Sometimes all these motives may act together.
The lowest species of jealousy is a sort of avarice or envy which, without being capable of love, at least wishes to possess the object of its jealousy alone by the one party assuming a sort of property right over the other. This jealousy, which might be called the Sultanic, is generally to be found with old withered "husbands" whom the devil has prompted to marry young women and who forthwith dream night and day of cuckold's horns. These Argus-eyed keepers are no longer capable of any feeling that could be called love, they are rather as a rule heartless housetyrants; at the same time they cannot, therefore, make their wife happy. But they grudge her every happy relationship, because their egotism will not allow them to admit their own incapacity by granting her a compensation, or because they wish to possess alone the very thing they do not deserve, in order to abuse it. They revenge their own want of amiability by deposing from office, so to speak, the (real or supposed) amiability of their wife. I have known a man who, loathed by his wife like carrion, paid no other attention to her than to watch her with restless anxiety and to pursue her with querulous jealousy. She died suddenly by an accident. Did the husband fall into despair on account of her loss? God forbid! The weight of a mountain was taken from him, and he called out, relieved: "Now she cannot at least belong to any one else!" So he himself did not lose anything in her; still he could not bear the thought that she should be possessed by another. That proves that jealousy does not come from love alone.
The general conclusion will be that jealousy is more the result of wrong conditions which cause uncongenial unions and which through moral corruption artificially create distrust, than a necessary accompaniment of love. Let us imagine a community consisting of ten, a hundred, a thousand couples, all of them united by true love. Is jealousy possible among these two thousand lovers? I do not think so, because every single individual is sure of his or her beloved object through reciprocated love. Now let us imagine this community expanded into an entire nation, educated according to reason, in which both sexes have every possible opportunity for making acquaintances and entering into suitable unions: jealousy will be banished by the simple assurance of love.
The lady who asked the questions traced jealousy to self-esteem. At the same time she calls attention to the fact that even animals are jealous. Do the animals then possess self-esteem? If I understood the questioner rightly, she meant to say that whoever esteemed himself could not bear to be neglected by the beloved person in favor of a third. But it seems to me that in such a case self-esteem would not dictate jealousy, but rather withdrawal from a relation in which the interest taken in a third person plainly shows us that we are no longer wanted.
Another lady-friend writes me that jealousy always made her indignant; either two persons were guaranteed to each other by love, and then there was no need of watching each other with Arguseyes, or love did not exist, and then there ought to be a separation; should her husband torment her with jealousy, she would look at it as a want of confidence, as an insult, as a disparagement of herself.
I for my part can understand jealousy, but not, as it were, expound it. It is a passion with which precisely those are most afflicted who are the least worthy of love. An innocent maiden who enters marriage will not dream of getting jealous; but all her innocence cannot secure her against the jealousy of her husband if he has been a libertine. Those are wont to be the most jealous who have the consciousness that they themselves are most deserving of jealousy. Most men in consequence of their present education and corruption have so poor an opinion not only of the male but even of the female sex that they believe every woman at every moment capable of what they themselves have looked for among all and have found among the most unfortunate, the prostitutes.
When jealousy is justifiable, it generally is so among women. A woman whose early confidence has been shaken by special signs, and who is now tormented by constant anxiety, without attaining to any certainty about the infidelity of the man she loves, is in a position deserving deepest sympathy and no reproach. But she also is suffering from the perversity of. conditions which make hypocrites of her husband and his accomplices.
The most objectionable thing about jealousy is that it attempts to fetter the person against whom it is directed, that it would deprive him of freedom of action, of the right of free control over himself. This despotism of jealousy is connected with marriage, as it has been hitherto, and with the legal inequality of the sexes. If the sexual union of two sovereign individuals is actually made into a relation of serfdom, it is but natural that especially the stronger party will presume to punish the emancipation of the other as a crime. Hence the brutality of vulgar husbands, who, after having in every possible and intolerable manner forfeited their wife's love, believe themselves justified in killing her when her precious lord has become revolting to her and another one pleases her better. Such cases are especially adapted to enlighten us as to the nature and the consequences of common jealousy. But whoever has reached those lofty heights of liberty and humanity where he will grant every individual the right of sovereignty over himself cannot wish to forcibly hold any one in a relation that does not conform to his wishes; and even if it should come hard to him to see a beloved person, or one become indispensable by habit, make use of her right of sovereignty in favor of a third person, he would still silence his jealousy in consequence of his appreciation of the rights of others. It can moreover be considered as having the force of a mathematical certainty that the party who voluntarily turns away from the other is so little suited to the other that the latter can anywhere find a substitute.
- ↑ "Du füllest meine Seele ganz."