Insight into Fidelity
These days infidelity has become one of the leading causes of marital disruption
, divorces and crimes of passion. All one has to do is open daily newspaper to read the obituaries or features on assaults and murders perpetrated due to jealousy, infidelity, rage or heart-break.
All extramarital sex, sexual intercourse between a married person and any person other than their spouse is considered as adultery, according to the Bible. In this respect we can regard adultery as infidelity. The gravity of this sin shows the fact that it is one of the most ardently condemned sexual sins by the Holy Book. Therefore, the Seventh Commandment states:" Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14). Jesus Christ said that those who do not commit adultery will get a passport into Heaven: "And a certain ruler questioned Him, saying: Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?', And Jesus said to him: You know the Commandments: Do not commit adultery...'' " (NAS, Luke 18:18-20). Since it has always been God's law, to commit adultery is to transgress the law, and therefore, a sin.
Among early New England colonialists, infidelity was considered a capital crime punishable by hanging or being branded with a letter "A" on the forehead. Like Hebrew law, the Puritans defined adultery as an act of fornication with a married woman. John Demos pointed out that "the essential element of sin was the woman's infidelity to her husband". A cuckolded man in Puritan New England had the right to divorce his wife. I wonder whether a woman had the same right.
The example of the severity of the Puritans' punishment for extramarital affairs was the case of Mary Latham, an eighteen-year old girl, charged with adultery. Having been spurned by her beloved one, she decided to marry the first man who proposed her, not knowing that he would be a much older man for whom she could have no fondness. It was soon after her wedding that she was seduced by several young men (married and unmarried). While fooling around with them, James Britton, one of the men, inwardly tormented by long-hidden guilt decided to come clean about the affair, which was the very beginning of her mishap. Fortune surely did not smile on them. Although they were very repentant for their misdeed, they were found guilty and executed.
Another example of this lies in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel "The Scarlet Letter". Hester Prynne, the protagonist of the novel, was also found guilty by the Puritans for having bit on the side with Arthur Dimmesdale, a local priest, while her husband was absent. She gave birth to a baby girl, Pearl, a fruit of that affair, who was regarded by the community as a child of the Satan, a bastard. Hester was forced to wear a letter "A", the symbol for adultery, "her passport into regions where other women dared not tread", embodied to her dress for having broken the Puritan law, a man-made law as Hawthorne points out in the novel. However, I am of the opinion that the real question of the novel is: "Who was more unfaithful, Hester or Roger, her husband?" It is obvious that they had marital problems; after all it was he who left her in the first place. However, she was the only one who suffered the consequences.
The movie "Unfaithful" directed by Adrian Lyne covers the same problem as mentioned in its title. Connie and Edward, her husband, did not live in a state of marital bliss. On the contrary, they grew distant from each other because Edward was very engrossed in his work, which, in my opinion, at least partially justified her adultery. She cheated on him with Paul whom she had recently collided with. When her husband started to suspect he hired a detective to investigate it, which once again proved their marital problem, i.e. he would rather do that than talk with his wife.
To sum up, as we have seen, many novels, magazines, movies, etc. deal with the issue of fidelity. Even Shakespeare's Othello committed a crime of passion when he suspected that his wife had been unfaithful. Furthermore, most of us felt sympathy for Anna Karenina whose love affair led to dreadful consequences. However, can we say the same for Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States, when his oral sex tryst with Monica Lewinsky was disclosed? Can we say the same about the tradition in Serbian history shown in the novel "Impure Blood" by Bora Stankovic, in which it was the father-in-law, not the groom, who was to spend the first night with the bride? It seems to me that in many cases infidelity is a sign of a marital problem, and therefore not only one person is to blame for that. After all, as an old proverb says: ''It takes two to tango."
Insight into Fidelity
By: Dragana Palakovi
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