"
JEALOUSY PURGED OF HATE
Casting back a glance over the ground traversed, we see that women as
well as men--primitive, ancient, oriental--were either strangers to
jealousy of any kind, or else knew it only as a species of anger,
hatred, cruelty, and selfish sensuality; never as an ingredient of
love. Australian women, Lumholtz tells us (203), "often have bitter
quarrels about men whom they love[19] and are anxious to marry. If the
husband is unfaithful, the wife frequently becomes greatly enraged."
As chastity is not by Australians regarded as a duty or a virtue, such
conduct can only be explained by referring to what Roth, for instance,
says (141) in regard to the Kalkadoon. Among these, where a man may
have as many as four or five wives,
"the discarded ones will often, through jealousy, fight with
her whom they consider more favored; on such occasions they
may often resort to stone-throwing, or even use fire-sticks
and stone-knives with which to mutilate the genitals."
Similarly, various cruel disfigurements of wives by husbands or other
wives, previously referred to as customary among savages, have their
motive in the desire to mar the charms of a rival or a disobedient
conjugal slave. The Indian chief who bites off an intriguing wife's
nose or lower lip takes, moreover, a cruel delight at sight of the
pain he inflicts--a delight of which he would be incapable were he
capable of love.
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