Contemporaneous Treatments of The Theme of Adultery
The defeat of the revolutions of 1848 and 1849 in Europe appears to have unleashed a veritable epidemic of treatments of the theme of adultery. The rebellion of a wife against the fetters of her marriage may be seen as a code for the artist's rebellion against political and legal authority. In the same year in which The Scarlet Letter was published, for instance Verdi's opera Stiffelio was premiered, in which the title character is also a minister; it is not he, but his wife who commits the act of adultery. From 1854 to 1859 Richard Wagner portrayed adulteresses in Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde; at the same time, Gustave Flaubert was working on Madame Bovary.
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“And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a dream,
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Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its theme ...”
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“Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.”
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