Married women’s jealousy often masks dissatisfaction by inventing a rival

Evidence

These pages convey the feeling of a vain effort to compensate for the absence of a real love with moral and “poetic” exaltation; demands, anxieties, jealousy, are expressions of the emptiness in her heart. A great deal of morbid jealousy develops in such conditions; in an indirect way, jealousy conveys a dissatisfaction that woman objectifies by inventing a rival; never feeling fulfillment with her husband, she rationalizes in some way her disappointment by imagining him deceiving her. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1297

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism of morbid jealousy as displaced dissatisfaction objectified into an imagined rival.
• XREF: connects to: Married women resort to imaginary passion to avoid risking real affairs — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1612; Jealousy that targets the wrong rivals constricts the woman’s dependence further. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1880; Jealousy tortures a woman because certainty would force her to renounce love as religion — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1879 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Marital love society demands drives wives into self-deception rather than honest feeling #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1288