It is a well known fact that competition and jealousy are a key component of any normal relationship between women. From the beginning of time novels, plays, and songs have constantly told the tale of a woman SO beautiful that she is loved and adored by all men, yet hated and scorned at by all women.
In Nathaniel Hawthorns "The Birthmark" we are once again faced with these differing opinions. Georgiana is either blessed or cursed, (depending on who you ask) with the small mark of a handprint upon her face. The men say it is a, “token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts” while the women describe it as, “...the ‘bloody hand’ as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of Georgiana’s beauty” (Hawthorn 85). It is easy to say that it is simply jealousy that brings them to this awful opinion, but I think it goes much deeper then that.
I want to take a look back into our species past, to a time where life wasn’t guaranteed and survival was only for the fittest and most well aquipt humans. To the times before modern medicine, convenience stores, cars, and houses. Think of inter-gender jealousy and competition as exactly that... Competition for survival. Our purpose as a species was originally only to keep procreating, keep surviving, and to find a strong mate who could help our offspring survive. This hatred of women who can pull any strong, viable men they want comes from our animalistic understanding of mating that I believe still lingers, no matter how advanced and sophisticated of a species we become.
When you look at us on a genetic level, we are purely still animals. Something along the way allowed us to break free from pure animalistic tendencies, but our very genetic beginnings can be traced back to them. I believe that because us as women still strive to find the best husband, the strongest boyfriend, or the richest man to take care of us that we are still relying on this instinct to find the best mate to make our lives simpler. Believing this it isn’t hard to understand why such rivalry between women exists. We want to have what is best and anyone who can get must have something wrong with them in order to rationalize their luck and beauty in our human minds. The ability to have this thought is what separates us from the animal kingdom, but it is ultimately stemmed from it too.
The relationships between women can be a very strange thing. Unlike men, we don’t just battle it out but rather hold grudges longer then we are actually angry for. Although I can’t say I know where this stems from in any way, it is definitely something unique to our sex that explains who we are as a developing species. Jealousy between women will probably never die, but continues to exist as a fight for the best mate, the best life, and in now days emotional and financial survival.
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I definitely agree with your thought that women are naturally competitive creatures. We see another woman with something we feel that we deserve and make a preconception about her. We ask why she deserves said item of contention and why we do not. Joan Didion said “To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self.” I think that the reason so many women in today’s society are jealous is that the standard of beauty and perfection is skewed, and there is no other choice than to be dissatisfied with oneself. “Some fastidious persons-- but they were exclusively of her own sex-- affirmed that the bloody hand... rendered her countenance even hideous.” (Hawthorne 85) To begin with, these women were unhappy with their own appearance. Seeing a woman graced with such a high amount of natural beauty and admirers, the women latch onto the only imperfection upon Georgiana’s face; her birthmark.
ReplyDeleteI think the word “obsession” goes hand in hand with jealousy. Women obsess over their appearance as well as the seemingly better ones of others. Yet I think that men can obsess over appearance as much as women, whether it is over their own or another’s. Aylmer becomes increasingly obsessed with Georgiana’s birthmark. “...seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives.” (Hawthorne 86) He had to have something to fix, just like women always feel that they must have something to fix in their appearance. Even though women are known for being jealous creatures, which is in a sense true, obsessions are not limited to women, but also shared by men.