The Justification of the Order

Abstract

The pattern of death and destruction which, with the significant exceptions that have been noted, encompasses the act of adultery must raise the question of the validity of its own compulsion. One way of trying to answer such a question is to ask, more simply, whether the reader of the novels, having seen the issue raised and resolved by the various authors, feels the given outcome to be justified or not; and in either eventuality to try to ascertain at what level the justification operates, or fails to — whether the grounds for the punishment of the nineteenth-century adulterer/adulteress arise out of relativities like convention or economics, or out of more profound psychological, religious, or even mystical imperatives.