The Anxiety of Dispossession: Jealousy in Nineteenth-century French Culture

by Masha Belenky

In nineteenth-century France an obsession with jealousy swept the culture as a whole. Virtually every major French novelist employed it as a central plot device. At the same time, jealousy became a key theme for a broad range of medical, journalistic, and moralist authors interested in the study of contemporary mores. In The Anxiety of Jealousy in Nineteenth-Century French Culture , Masha Belenky argues that it was through narratives of jealousy that writers grappled with the crises of political and moral authority, anxieties surrounding changing gender roles, and new ideas about marriage that defined post-Revolution

173 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[N Perrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-crafted analysis of the construction of jealousy across the French Third Republic that is simultaneously succinct, clear, and insightful.

Belenky argues that the nineteenth-century obsession with sexual jealousy across all forms of intellectual discourse was primarily a result of changes in matrimonial and property laws following the implementation of the Napoleonic Code. Because any child born within a marriage was by law the father's, men developed new forms of anxiety that they would quite literally be dispossessed if their offspring was not their own. Cuckolding was no longer limited to questions of honor but took on new dimensions of economic (and soon existential) significance as well.

Belenky also offers acute readings of how the literary motif of male voyeurism fuses together knowledge, vision, and power, but ironically disempowers the male gaze once he realizes that he has been cuckolded. The anxiety resides in what the knowledge could potentially grant. Additionally, Belenky explores the gendered notions of jealousy which was commonly understood as a female pathology to be regulated while a virile masculine feature to be encouraged.

Overall, a great contribution to the history of emotions.