natural; for these extremes are extremes of the same passion; and
most cases lie somewhere on the scale between them, and are so
complicated by ordinary likes and dislikes, by incidental wounds
to vanity or gratifications of it, and by class feeling, that A
will be jealous of B and not of C, and will tolerate infidelities
on the part of D whilst being furiously angry when they are
committed by E.


THE CONVENTION OF JEALOUSY

That jealousy is independent of sex is shown by its intensity in
children, and by the fact that very jealous people are jealous of
everybody without regard to relationship or sex, and cannot bear
to hear the person they "love" speak favorably of anyone under
any circumstances (many women, for instance, are much more
jealous of their husbands' mothers and sisters than of unrelated
women whom they suspect him of fancying); but it is seldom
possible to disentangle the two passions in practice. Besides,
jealousy is an inculcated passion, forced by society on people in
whom it would not occur spontaneously. In Brieux's Bourgeois aux
Champs, the benevolent hero finds himself detested by the
neighboring peasants and farmers, not because he preserves game,
and sets mantraps for poachers, and defends his legal rights over
his land to the extremest point of unsocial savagery, but
because, being an amiable and public-spirited person, he refuses
to do all this, and thereby offends and disparages the sense of
property in his neighbors. The same thing is true of matrimonial
jealousy; the man who does not at least pretend to feel it and
behave as badly as if he really felt it is despised and insulted;