-Chapter-
Strict meaning gets blurred in art and history as it does in life. In Victorian times, in England and on the continent, it was not unheard of for a wife, especially a younger "trophy" wife to have secret liaisons with friends of her husband who she met in the marital home, and with the servants. It was aristocratic privilege.
In Eyes Wide Shut a debonair man hits on...I forget her name, some famous, gorgeous actress, saying,
“You know why women used to get married. It was the only way they could lose their virginity and be free to do what they wanted with other men. The ones they really wanted.”
That's like the only thing I remember
from that movie. But that's aristocratic privilege. It was an invitation
to cuckoldry but the woman declined.
In somewhat earlier times Winston Churchill's wife had a "fling" on a trip abroad. Also privileged behavior of the elite class. Was Churchill a cuckold or a wittol? Since his wife admitted it (I don't know if at the time), he was accepting of it as s.o.p. Aristocratic privilege.
There is a much older painting, I forget who the artist was, or the title, that depicts the ambiguity between cuckold and wittol.
She is handing her older “eyes wide shut” husband, I presume, his eyeglasses so that he can observe her nude with a dashing young lover. She is taunting him. His body language gives it away. It's not the modern practice of "watching the wife" have sex with another man. The old man is a grudgingly accepting wittol, the same as may be in the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.
This theme, and to be precise, the theme here is the husband who has no choice but to accept and who is taunted by his wife, is also present in The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Margot Macomber has had lots of affairs, is on a safari with her husband Francis, and has an affair with their white hunter guide. "You promised there'd be none of that if we went on this trip," Francis whines. "Well, there is now", Margot breezily and cruelly answers. "You think I'll put up with anything.", Francis rejoins with heat. "I know that you will, sweets."
One of Hemingway's closest associates, maybe an editor, said that Margot was meant to symbolize the "bitch American wife" and the story was metaphorically about "Man free of women." (?) How could that be? The story ends with Francis' death; Margot killed him, it is ambiguous whether accidentally or deliberately. I had always interpreted the story as Hemingway asserting the ultimate triumph of woman over man.
Another artist's depiction.
A bitch Margot Macomber was, a cuckolding bitch, a wife she was, and an American she was. Was Margot Macomber a type?
In The Pioneers, for the record, the first American novel written by an American about American life, James Fenimore Cooper has the heroine, nee Elizabeth Temple, say to her husband,
"You know, Effingham, that my father has told you that I ruled him and that I should rule you. I am now about to exert my power."
Power. Power, Liberty and Independence were the themes, the obsessions of the American Revolution. John Adams wrote,
"In Europe power grants charters of liberty; in America liberty grants charters of power."
The sexual imagery in the pamphlets of the American Revolution is impossible to miss and Bernard Bailyn, the preeminent authority on that literature, did not miss it. Liberty was "hunted", "violated", "pure". Power was male to the Founding Fathers; Liberty was female. They would reverse the relationship and put the woman on top.
Liberty.
Chaucer, a man, wrote The Canterbury Tales for a nobleman patron.
Alison, the narrator of The Tale of the Wife of Bath ("Tale" is pun on
"Tail" I am convinced) has become an instantiation of female power and
liberty. Alison states to her husband, who she has cuckolded and who
complains,
Have thou ynogh, what thar thee recche or care
How myrily that othere folkes fare?
For certeyn, olde dotard, by youre leve,
Ye shul have queynte right ynogh at eve.
He is to greet a nygard, that wolde werne
340 A man to lighte his candle at his lanterne;
He shal have never the lasse light, pardee,
Have thou ynogh, thee thar nat pleyne thee.
You get all the cunt you want. What do you care if I get pleasure and give pleasure to other men? Don't be a niggard with cunt.
...
What eyleth yow to grucche thus and grone?
450 Is it for ye wolde have my queynte allone?
Wy, taak it al! lo, have it every deel!
Peter! I shrewe yow, but ye love it weel;
For if I wolde selle my bele chose,
I koude walke as fressh as is a rose
You
want my cunt all to yourself? Well, take it! But satisfy it, Peter, or
I'll sell it to someone who will. Alison was married five times.
The root of libertinism, "disregard of authority or convention in sexual or religious matters" is liberty.
Independence. When women achieved financial independence, through inheritance, or entry into the work force, they were no longer dependent on their husbands as breadwinners. This empowered them and gave them liberty, "freedom from overarching authority".
It
is important to note that not all cuckolding wives in the arts are
portrayed as "Bitch wives". Alison is a charming, funny, heroine, "rare
as a unicorn" (see immediately below). Even in the paintings, where the
husband is the "victim" the treatment of the wife is often humorous, not
condemning.
We Americans are sons and daughters of Mother England. We killed our mother. Five hundred and eighty years, a change in gender of authors and a change in religious influence from Protestantism to Judaism, and here came Erica Jong:
I was not
against marriage. I believed in it in fact. ...But what about all those
other longings which after a while marriage did nothing much to appease?
The restlessness, the hunger, the thump in the gut, the thump in the
cunt...
...
Even if you loved your husband, there came
that inevitable year when fucking him turned as bland as Velveeta
cheese: filling, fattening even, but no thrill to the tastebuds, no
bittersweet edge, no danger.
…
...my fantasy of the Zipless Fuck. The zipless fuck was more than a fuck. It was a platonic ideal. Zipless because when you came together zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. Tongues intertwined...The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not ‘taking’ and the woman is not ‘giving.’ No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.
