Jealousy

271 Pages·2014·4.65 MB·English

by  Peter Toohey

Jealousy
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ii
Peter Toohey
Jealousy
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS | NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
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Copyright © 2014 Peter Toohey
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Typeset in Arno Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Toohey, Peter, 1951-
Jealousy / Peter Toohey.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-18968-1 (alk. paper)
1. Jealousy. 2. Jealousy in literature. I. Title.  
BF575.J4T66 2014
152.4’8—dc23
2014028282
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For
Elaine Fantham
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Contents
Preface viii
1 What is jealousy? 1
2 The meat it feeds on 23
3 Ears mishear and eyes magnify 49
4 Beyond the Bullaburra triangle 80
5 Utopia 99
6 The invisible made visible 117
7 A feast for all the family 137
8 Meeting at the Dingo Bar 162
9 Rattling the cage 185
10 Turning your back on it 205
Readings 224
List of illustrations 243
Acknowledgements 248
Index 250
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Preface
‘If there was some woman in London that Maxim loved,’
laments the narrator of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, ‘I could
fight her. We would stand on common ground. I should not be
afraid. Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered.
One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, and
Maxim would not love her any more. But Rebecca would never
grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And her I could
not fight. She was too strong for me.’
The ‘new’ Mrs de Winter is deeply jealous of her husband
Maxim’s late wife. Much of the novel is absorbed with her
growing preoccupation with the charismatic, sophisticated and
beautiful Rebecca. She struggles against her rival’s shade,
which, she fears, haunts the mind of Maxim. She struggles as
well with the Cornish estate of Manderley and its staff. From
the seething Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper, she learns that ‘the
real Mrs de Winter’ used cruelly and deliberately to provoke
Maxim’s jealousy, bringing men back for weekends: ‘They
made love to her of course; who would not? She laughed, she
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PREFACE
would come back and tell me what they had said, and what
they’d done. She did not mind, it was like a game to her. Like a
game. Who wouldn’t be jealous? They were all jealous, all mad
for her . . . everyone who knew her, everyone who came to
Manderley.’
How can you possibly deal with a rival whom you cannot
confront or combat? Maxim ‘was jealous while she lived, and
now he’s jealous when she’s dead’. Maxim also acted on that
jealousy; after Rebecca threatens that her illegitimate child will
inherit Manderley, he shoots her in the boathouse. The new
Mrs de Winter is only freed from her jealousy when she learns
the truth about Rebecca, and when the house, so infused with
Rebecca’s presence that it seems almost to be alive, burns to the
ground.
Published nearly eighty years ago, Rebecca is probably the
most- read book about jealousy in English. It has never gone out
of print, and has been adapted for stage and screen numerous
times. That says something about the enduring fascination of
the emotion of jealousy. (It also says something about the
enduring fascination exerted by popular psychological thrillers
and Gothic romances.) Rebecca, which its author called ‘a study
in jealousy’, is also a novel crafted from jealousy: du Maurier’s
husband, Major Tommy ‘Boy’ Browning, had been engaged to
a glamorous woman called Jan Ricardo, who threw herself
under a train during the Second World War. Daphne du Maurier
harboured a suspicion that Tommy had always remained
attached to her. The novel’s love triangle, with a ghostly but still
powerful presence at one of its corners, had its roots in real life.
After all, the sexual jealousy that the novel circles around is
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