The Anatomy of Melancholy

Jealousy: its different meanings, name, definition, extent and various kinds; among rulers, parents and friends; in animals and human beings; before marriage, as rivals, or afterwards, as discussed here.

Valescus de Taranta, in his chapter on melancholy, Elia Montalto, Felix Platter and Guaineri classify jealousy as a cause of melancholy; others call it a symptom, because melancholy people are especially susceptible to it among the mind’s passions and disturbances.

But I think that, because of its range and its prominence above other ordinary symptoms, it deserves to be treated as a separate species: it is so great and conspicuous a matter, so furious a passion, and almost as widespread as love itself. As Benedetto Varchi holds, “There is no love without some jealousy”; “he who is not jealous does not love.”

For these reasons I shall expand upon it and treat it separately, as an illegitimate offshoot or kind of love melancholy. Whereas passionate love commonly precedes marriage, jealousy usually follows it, torturing and tormenting in the same way. It therefore deserves similar treatment and requires equal care and effort in setting out its various causes, prognoses and cures.

I have undertaken this all the more willingly so that anyone who is or has been jealous may see his error as in a mirror; anyone who has not may learn to detest it, avoid it himself, and free others who are affected by it in any way.

Jealousy is described and defined as “a suspicion the lover has about the person he chiefly loves, lest he or she should fall in love with someone else”; or an eager desire to enjoy a beautiful person alone, to have that person exclusively to himself: a fear or doubt that an outsider might participate or share in his love.

Or, as Scaliger adds, “a fear of losing the favour of the woman he so earnestly loves.” Cardano calls it “a zeal for love, and a kind of envy lest someone should deceive us.” Juan Luis Vives defines it in the same words, or with little difference in meaning.

There are many other kinds of jealousy, though all are improperly called so: that of parents, tutors and guardians concerning their children, friends they love, or people entrusted to their care or protection.

Storax! Has Aeschinus not returned from dinner tonight, Nor any of the servants who went out to meet him?

So the old man in the comedy cried out in agitation, from anxious fear and concern for his adopted son: “not about beauty, but lest they should come to harm, do wrong, or in any way discredit, disgrace”—as Vives observes—“or endanger themselves and us.”

Aegeus was similarly anxious about his son Theseus’s success when he went to fight the Minotaur, fearing he might be defeated: “Fear is always inclined to believe the worse.”

We are always inclined to suspect the worst in such uncertain cases, as many wives do in their husbands’ absence, or doting mothers in their children’s, fearing that while away they may be led astray or fall ill. They continually await news of how they are faring and what has become of them; they cannot bear to have them long out of sight: “Oh, my sweet son! Oh, my dear child!” and so on.