Definition
One of the major themes in the history of literature, a recurrent feature of tragedy, comedy, romance, and the novel. Marriage and the family have constituted the linchpin of the social order, guaranteeing society's survival and continuity. In this context adultery may have served a dual and contradictory role: both as threat to society and as safety valve, an outlet for the oppressive features of marriage. The literature of adultery reflects this ambivalence from the beginning. In Homer's Iliad, the adulterous relation of Paris and Helen is the catastrophic cause of the Trojan War, while the New Testament account of the woman taken in adultery, with Jesus' injunction that punishment of the woman belongs only to "he who is without sin," underscores the ubiquity of the sin along with the need for compassion.
Medieval romances, such as those surrounding the Arthurian legend or the story of Tristan and Iseult, often emphasize the destructive nature of adulterous passion. In medieval and Renaissance comedy, particularly farce, the emphasis frequently falls on cuckoldry, usually with the suggestion of adultery as a form of justified revenge; Machiavelli's Mandragola (1518) is a representative example. Shakespeare offers a distinctive variation on the tradition, focusing on imagined cuckoldry, a theme that forms the basis not only of such farces as The Merry Wives of Windsor and romances like The Winter's Tale but also, most memorably, the tragic action of Othello.According to the critic Tony Tanner, adultery was a particularly fertile theme for the 19th-century novel, providing the opportunity to explore the instability of marriage at the historical moment when marriage was beginning to be seen in conflict with the desire for individual freedom. Undoubtedly this development was also intensely connected to the changing definitions of the nature and roles of women. In novels such as Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856–57), Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1875–77) and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), the centrality of the woman and the complexity of her role anticipate this shift in mood. Although the heroines of all three of these novels commit adultery and are punished as social outcasts, they also achieve an authentic sense of self from the adulterous experience and the suffering that follows it.Among 20th-century novelists, John Updike is noted for his concentration on the theme. Updike's approach is distinguished by his representation of adultery as a spiritual transgression instead of a social threat. In focusing on this spiritual or religious dimension, he follows his progenitor, Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter, in fact, forms the basis of three novels by Updike (A Month of Sundays, 1975; Roger's Version, 1986; and S, 1988) in which the perspectives of the three main characters of the Hawthorne novel (Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and Hester Prynne) are recreated in contemporary terms.
Email
Print
Save
Citation
Record URL
