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What is jealousy?

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What is jealousy? The Swedish playwright August

Strindbergs Night of Jealousy (1893) offers one kind of answer.
On first glance the painting is an impenetrable blur of darks,
greys and whites. Its all raging seas, slashing rain and thunderclouds an analogy, you could say, for someone in the midst of
a jealous rage.
Many who have been badly jealous might instantly believe
that, yes, thats how it really feels. Strindberg has got the turbulence, anxiety and pain down cold. But couldnt this abstract
evocation of jealousy do duty for just about any strong feeling?
Grief, anger, depression or desperation could all be easily
ascribed to it. What the painting conveys to me, then, is the
difficulty that resides in trying to represent an emotion like
jealousy. If it werent for the title of the painting and
Strindbergs own note on the back of it to his soon-to-be-wife:
To Miss Frida Uhl from the artist (the Symbolist August
Strindberg). The painting depicts the sea (bottom right),
Clouds (top), a Juniper bush (top left) and symbolizes: a Night

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JEALOUSY

1 Johan August Strindberg, Svartsjukans natt (Night of Jealousy), 1893

of Jealousy I doubt thered be a clue what Strindberg is

getting at.
But using words to explain emotional experiences isnt easy,
precise or definitive either. Its difficult to know what youre
feeling and to name it. (Im feeling emotional is another way
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of uttering the difficulty of naming what youre feeling.) But

more than that, feeling an emotion precedes our ability to
speak about it. Small children can feel emotions long before
they are able to say what they are. Emotions are not dependent
for their existence on a persons capacity to nominate them, let
alone to understand them. Some aspects of our experience of
emotions will always evade descriptions and definitions. And
language is a very imprecise mechanism for communicating
our inner states to others: how often have you heard What do
you mean?
Jealousy, though, is an especially difficult emotion to talk
about.
The first reason for this is because it is a very slippery
descriptor. The term jealousy has no cast iron status in terms
of what it designates. If you were to translate Deuteronomy
5:9 for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me into todays English,
the word jealous mightnt appear at all; you might choose
something like demanding instead. Jealous does not own
exclusive rights over the naming of the feeling associated with
that word. Demanding, as well as possessive, covetous,
begrudging, emulous and invidious, as well as the slangy
hogging, hater, green and well jel, all make a claim.
The enthusiastic use of well jel by many British youngsters,
especially since it was popularised by the TV programme The
Only Way Is Essex, points to one of the commonest ways that
jealousy is used incorrectly, in the eyes of many. Check
Twitter and youll see what I mean. Users across the globe
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apply the meme and hashtag #welljel constantly my cursory

glance suggested it was around once every ten minutes. At the
time I was writing this paragraph (when the northern hemispheres summer months were approaching), well jel was
applied to upcoming holidays in the sun (have fun on that
boat! Well jel!), followed closely by unusual, exciting, and for
this writer impenetrable experiences (Well jel me. Thats when
Lionel Ritchie was at his best), or items of clothing (you have
so much swag I am well jel), or appearance (Has some serious
cheekbone envy after watching Angelina Jolie in Maleficent!!!
#welljel) and even food (I went for Jerk Chicken wid rice &
peas & brown sauce . . . #welljel). Are they really talking about
jealousy? My point is that all this jealousy would more likely
be termed envy.
Envy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is A
feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone
elses possessions, qualities, or luck. The verb means Desire to
have a quality, possession, or other desirable thing belonging to
(someone else). Jealousy is more commonly associated with
sex (your hearts desire is cheating on you), personal relationships, and protecting your posessions or rights. As Peter van
Sommers outlines, Envy concerns what you would like to have
but dont possess, whereas jealousy concerns what you have
and do not wish to lose. Envy is classically thought of as being
dyadic (you and the thing) whereas jealousy is triadic (you, the
thing or person, and the rival that threatens to take them from
you). Ill return to and ask questions about the details of
these definition later, but this is the common view. Look back at
those tweets focus on commodities, good looks and good luck.
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It is, in the widely accepted understanding, envy, isnt it? So

why are these people not well env?
This interchangeability and imprecision may not be simply
the result of ignorance and confusion among teenagers today.
Envy and jealousy actually have a long history of trading places.
For instance, between the late fourteenth-century Wycliffes
Bible and the 1611 King James version, lines from the Song of
Solomon 8.6 transformed from the breathtaking loue is strong
/ As deth, enuy is hard / As helle, into love is strong / As death,
jealousy is cruel / As the grave (my emphases). Both versions
agree on the force of their chosen word, whether its envy or
jealousy, and there is no difficulty for the reader of either
version in understanding the meaning. The Latin in the
Vulgates verison of this passage is aemulatio, cognate with
emulous in English, and it can mean jealous or envious. The
Latin invidia also translates as either term.
Invidia, and the oscillation between envy and jealousy, is at
the heart of Roman retellings of the Judgment of Paris, one of
the most famous tales from Greek mythology, popular from as
early as the eighth century bce. The story tells how Zeus
arranged a marriage banquet and, wanting to keep the party
calm, did not invite the goddess Strife. Snubbed, Strife came
anyway and brought trouble with her: a golden apple on which
was inscribed for the most beautiful woman. She threw the
apple into the midst of the celebration. Hera, wife of Zeus,
Athena, daughter of Zeus, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love,
all insisted that the apple was addressing them personally. Zeus
appointed Paris, the son of Priam the king of Troy, to arbitrate
their claims. The goddesses each tried to bribe him: Hera
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