The data breach at the Ashley Madison website for people pursuing extramarital affairs is just a new twist on a very old tale. Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterley’s Lover may be among the most famous modern works which turn on a character’s adultery but the conflict between individual desire and social responsibility, sexual urges and emotional loyalty, is age-old, a recurring subject in both the Bible and the Classics.
Interestingly, the guilty protagonists are all too often women, even though statistically husbands are much more likely to stray.
Adultery has been a fact of life and a recurring theme since Clytemnestra made hay with Aegisthus, while her husband Agamemnon was doing Trojan work elsewhere. What do you mean, you haven’t read Aeschylus’s Oresteia?
Even the Bible is not immune, starting with Abraham himself. Drop the Good Book and as like as not, it will fall open at such juicy passages as David and Bathsheba, or Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, who, failing to to seduce him, falsely accuses him of attempted rape. Another case prompted Jesus to utter the famous judgment: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.
Adultery has also been part of cinema’s stock in trade from its early days. The IMDB database lists 270 French titles alone (who'd have thought it?) with it as a theme, from And God Created Woman (1956) through The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) to Romance (1999).
Here then is a potted history of adultery on screen and page.
BOOKS
The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert (1751 )
Denis Diderot equated adultery to theft, writing that “adultery is, after homicide, the most punishable of all crimes, because it is the most cruel of all thefts, and an outrage capable of inciting murders and the most deplorable excesses.” However, it also noted the legal double standard from that period: “Furthermore, although the husband who violates conjugal trust is guilty as well as the woman, it is not permitted for her to accuse him, nor to pursue him because of this crime.”
Les Liaisons dangereuses / Dangerous Liaisons (1782) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
The story of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two rivals (and ex-lovers) who use seduction as a weapon to humiliate and degrade others. Among their victims is the virtuous Madame de Tourvel. It ends badly.
The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and is found guilty of adultery. She is required to wear a scarlet A (for adulterer) on her dress to shame her but struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity.
Madame Bovary (1856) by Gustave Flaubert
Flaubert’s debut novel tells the story of a doctor’s wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs with a rakish landowner and lawyer and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. It ends badly.
Anna Karenina (1877) by Leo Tolstoy
The tragic story of the married eponymous aristocrat and her affair with the wealthy bachelor Count Vronsky,who is eager to marry her if only she would agree to leave her husband Karenin, a senior government official, but she is vulnerable to outside forces and her own insecurities. When Anna and Vronsky return from a sojourn in Italy, she is shunned while Vronsky pursues his social life. It ends badly.
Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
Leopold Bloom may well be the most famous, and most loveable, cuckold in literature. His passionate wife Molly’s affair with Blazes Boylan may cause him pain, but his love for her endures. Whether his sexual encounter with Gerty MacDowell itself constitutes an act of adultery may well be a question that only Joyce’s Jesuit educators, or perhaps Bill Clinton, are qualified to answer.
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) by James M Cain
Regarded as one of the key crime novels of the 20th century, the novel’s mix of sexuality and violence provoked controversy. Frank Chambers, a young drifter, stops at a rural California diner operated by a young, beautiful woman, Cora, and her much older husband, Nick Papadakis, “the Greek”. Chambers gets a job there, he and Cora begin an affair and plot to kill the Greek. It ends badly.
The End of the Affair (1951) by Graham Greene
Maurice Bendrix, a rising writer (loosely based on Greene himself), has an affair with Sarah Miles during the London Blitz. Sarah is based loosely on Greene’s then mistress, Catherine Walston, to whom the book is dedicated. Bendrix becomes jealous and frustrated by her refusal to divorce Henry, her amiable but boring and impotent husband. A bomb blast almost kills Brendrix, after which Sarah breaks off the affair with no apparent explanation. It ends badly.
The Ginger Man (1955) by JP Donleavy
Sebastian Dangerfield is many things, a bohemian, a bozzer and sower of chaos, but faithful is not one of them. At times our anti-hero makes it clear he is aware of the horrors, and he refers to the “absence of dignity in our lives” when speaking of his marriage to the long-suffering Marion.
Parnell and the Englishwoman (1991) by Hugh Leonard
The story of the love affair beteween Charles Stewart Parnell, the uncrowned king of Ireland, and Kitty O’Shea, the wife of one of his MPs, which split not just a family but a nation. A film version was made starring Trevor Eve and Francesca Annis as the ill-starred couple. The shadow of Parnell’s fall from grace and tragic death also falls heavily over James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).
FILMS
Fatal Attraction (Dir Adrian Lyne, 1987)
Michael Douglas does the nasty with Glenn Close while popular ’80s every-wife Anne Archer is out of town. He stops taking her calls. He moves to the country. But he’s not going to wriggle out of it that easily. Moral of the story: if you cheat, your daughter’s beloved pet will be cooked and you’ll have a massive plumbing bill if you want to fix the bathroom after the inevitable violent showdown.
Dangerous Liaisons (Dir Stephen Frears, 1988)
Pre-Revolution Paris. Two sexually voracious nobles – Glenn Close and John Malkovich – fix a bet that the latter will seduce the virtuous Michelle Pfieffer. Then he falls for her and all hell breaks lose. Moral of the story: if you cheat, don’t leave a paper trail or you’ll get booed out of court.
The Graduate (Dir Mike Nichols, 1967)
College graduate Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) is seduced by mature quail Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft), only to then fall for her daughter. Moral of the story: if you cheat everyone will know because Simon and Garfunkel will write a song about it. And worse: somebody’s going to have to pay for an abandoned wedding.
The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (Dir Peter Greenaway, 1989)
Restaurant regular Michael (Alan Howard) really should have thought twice before embarking on an affair with the wife (Helen Mirren) of a dangerous, genital-damaging criminal (Michael Gambon). Moral of the story: if you cheat, you will be tortured and then baked in a large oven. For about 30 minutes per pound.
Doctor Zhivago (Dir David Lean, 1965)
During the Russian Revolution, the titular medic falls for Lara (Julie Christie), even though she has been having an affair with her mother’s dodgy boyfriend (Rod Steiger). Zhivago marries his cousin Tonya, but he still carries a torch for Lara. Romantic shenanigans ensue over a three-hour run time. Moral of the story: if you cheat, the gulag awaits and the purge is coming.
I Am Curious (Yellow) (Dir Vilgot Sjöman, 1967)
Right-on Sixties chick Lena meets right-wing wide-boy Bill. He already has a partner and a child so Lena retreats to the country to practice yoga. Moral of the story: if you cheat, you’ll need treatment for scabies and, for some reason, an intervention from Martin Luther King.
Blue Jasmine (Dir Woody Allen, 2013)
When Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) learns that her wealthy husband (Alec Baldwin) is a super love-rat, she shops him to the authorities. Moral of the story: if you cheat, you’ll die in jail and your former wife will go gaga on – gulp – the Wrong Side of The Tracks.
Coming Home (Dir Hal Ashby, 1978)
Married Jane Fonda bonds with a paraplegic Vietnam veteran turned anti-war campaigner (Jon Voight). Her husband responds by stripping off and swimming out to sea. Moral of the story: cheating is okay if it’s done in protest against Vietnam. Who knew?
The Getaway (Dir Sam Peckinpah, 1972)
Dodgy sexual politics ahoy. Brutal Rudy( Al Lettieri) pursues Steve Mc Queen and Ali McGraw after a botched bank robbery, stopping only to kidnap a vet and his wife (Sally Struthers). The wife and Rudy get together; the vet kills himself in a scene that’s still shocking, some 40 years after the film premiered. The moral of the story: Cheating won’t help you: you’re the bad guy in a Steve Mc Queen movie. You’re going down.
American Beauty (Dir Sam Mendes, 1999)
Kevin Spacey, in full-blown mid-life crisis, can’t stop fantasising about his teenage daughter’s cheerleading friend (Mena Suvari). Will he think twice about making a sleazy move? Moral of the story: Too late. He thought about cheating. Now people will die.
