Love wasn't the only thing in the air on Valentine's Day 2003. A Texas jury had just found Clara Harris guilty of killing her husband in a "sudden passion." After encountering him at a hotel with a mistress, she had driven the car over his body again and again. As others were exchanging tokens of love, the "Mercedes murderer" was sentenced to spend 20 years in jail.
Figure 1. Long a popular theme in literature, art, music and drama, jealousy is today the subject of debate among psychologists. An archetype of female jealousy is the mythological character of Hera, wife of Zeus. After Semele was impregnated by the philandering Zeus, Hera set in motion a series of events leading to Semele’s death by fire. As his mother was consumed by the flames, Dionysus (Bacchus) was born. Hera is shown observing the unfolding scene from above in the engraving The Birth of Bacchus, made around the beginning of the 19th century by Jean-Baptiste Patas, after a 16th-century painting by Jules Romain (Guilio Romanus). Evolutionary psychologists have proposed that female jealousy is triggered by a mate’s emotional infidelity, whereas male jealousy is triggered by sexual infidelity. The author finds the evidence supporting this view to be equivocal at best.
Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia
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