Cuckoldry

Cuckoldry

See also Adultery, Faithlessness.

Actaeon’s horns

symbol of cuckoldry. [Medieval and Ren. Folklore: Walsh Classical, 5]

antlers

metaphorical decoration for deceived husband. [Western Folklore: Jobes, 395]

Arveragus

delivers wife to adulterer to keep promise. [Br. Lit.: Canterbury Tales, “The Franklin’s Tale”]

Boylan, Blazes

cuckolds Leopold Bloom. [Irish Lit.: James Joyce Ulysses in Magill I, 1040]

Cabot, Ephraim

Abbie, his young wife, seduces his youngest son Eben. [Am. Drama: Eugene O’Neill Desire Under the Elms]

Chatterley, Sir Clifford

cripple whose wife has a prolonged affair with his gamekeeper. [Br. Lit.: D. H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Benét, 559]

cuckoo

symbolizes adulterous betrayal by wife. [Western Folklore: Jobes, 395; Mercatante, 164]

del Sarto, Andrea

cuckolded Florentine painter; protagonist of Browning’s poem. [Art Hist.: Walsh Modern, 19–20; Br. Lit.: “Andrea del Sarto” in Norton, 778–783]

Hildebrand, Old

sent away while wife and preacher play. [Ger. Fairy Tale: Grimm, 333]

Mannon, Ezra

kindly general deceived by adulterous wife and murdered. [Am. Lit.: Mourning Becomes Electra]

Mark, King

by Tristan after May-December marriage to Isolde. [Ger. Opera: Wagner, Tristan and Isolde, Westerman, 220]

Menelaus

his wife, Helen, was also Paris’s lover. [Gk. Lit.: Iliad]

Rubin, Maximiliano

sickly pharmacist; wife’s infidelities begin on wedding night. [Span. Lit.: Fortunata and Jacinta]

Trusotsky

learns from his dead wife’s letters that she had numerous lovers and that he is not the father of his child. [Russ. Lit.: Dostoevsky The Eternal Husband]

Uriah the Hittite

while he is at war, his wife sleeps with David. [O.T.: II Samuel 11:6]